Nothing more was heard of Attwood for some years; a tailor one day came

down to C----, who had made clothes for Jack in his school-days, and

furnished him with regimentals: he produced a long bill for one hundred

and twenty pounds and upwards, and asked where news might be had of his

customer. Jack was in India, with his regiment, shooting tigers and

jackals, no doubt. Occasionally, from that distant country, some

magnificent rumour would reach us of his proceedings. Once I heard that

he had been called to a court-martial for unbecoming conduct; another

time, that he kept twenty horses, and won the gold plate at the Calcutta

races. Presently, however, as the recollections of the fifth form wore

away, Jack’s image disappeared likewise, and I ceased to ask or to think

about my college chum.

A year since, as I was smoking my cigar in the Estaminet du Grand

Balcon, an excellent smoking-shop, where the tobacco is unexceptionable,

and the Hollands of singular merit, a dark-looking, thick-set man, in a

greasy well-cut coat, with a shabby hat, cocked on one side of his dirty

face, took the place opposite to me, at the little marble table, and

called for brandy. I did not much admire the impudence or the appearance

of my friend, nor the fixed stare with which he chose to examine me. At

last he thrust a great greasy hand across the table, and said,

‘Titmarsh, do you forget your old friend Attwood?’

I confess my recognition of him was not so joyful as on the day ten

years earlier, when he had come, bedizened with lace and gold rings, to

see us at C---- school: a man in the tenth part of a century learns a

deal of worldly wisdom, and his hand, which goes naturally forward to

seize the gloved finger of a millionaire, or a milor, draws

instinctively back from a dirty fist, encompassed by a ragged wristband

and a tattered cuff. But Attwood was in nowise so backward; and the iron

squeeze with which he shook my passive paw, proved that he was either

very affectionate or very poor. You, my dear sir, who are reading this

history, know very well the great art of shaking hands; recollect how

you shook Lord Dash’s hand the other day, and how you shook _off_ poor

Blank, when he came to borrow five pounds of you.

[Illustration]

However, the genial influence of the hollands speedily dissipated

anything like coolness between us; and, in the course of an hour’s

conversation, we became almost as intimate as when we were suffering

together under the ferule of old Swishtail. Jack told me that he had

quitted the army in disgust; and that his father, who was to leave him a

fortune, had died ten thousand pounds in debt: he did not touch upon his

own circumstances; but I could read them in his elbows, which were

peeping through his old frock. He talked a great deal, however, of runs

of luck, good and bad; and related to me an infallible plan for breaking

all the play-banks in Europe--a great number of old tricks;--and a vast

quantity of gin-punch was consumed on the occasion; so long, in fact,

did our conversation continue, that, I confess it with shame, the

sentiment, or something stronger, quite got the better of me, and I

have, to this day, no sort of notion how our palaver concluded.--Only,

on the next morning I did not possess a certain five-pound note, which

on the previous evening was in my sketch-book (by far the prettiest

drawing, by the way, in the collection); but there, instead, was a strip

of paper, thus inscribed:

‘IOU

Five Pounds. JOHN ATTWOOD, Late of the N--th Dragoons.’

I suppose Attwood borrowed the money, from this remarkable and

ceremonious acknowledgment on his part: had I been sober I would just as

soon have lent him the nose on my face; for, in my then circumstances,

the note was of much more consequence to me.

As I lay, cursing my ill-fortune, and thinking how on earth I should

manage to subsist for the next two months, Attwood burst into my little

garret--his face strangely flushed--singing and shouting as if it had

been the night before. ‘Titmarsh,’ cried he, ‘you are my preserver!--my

best friend! Look here, and here, and here!’ And at every word Mr.

Attwood produced a handful of gold, or a glittering heap of five-franc

pieces, or a bundle of greasy, dusky bank-notes, more beautiful than

either silver or gold;--he had won thirteen thousand francs after

leaving me at midnight in my garret. He separated my poor little all, of

six pieces, from this shining and imposing collection; and the passion

of envy entered my soul: I felt far more anxious now than before,

although starvation was then staring me in the face; I hated Attwood for

_cheating_ me out of all this wealth. Poor fellow! it had been better

for him had he never seen a shilling of it.

However, a grand breakfast at the Café Anglais dissipated my chagrin;

and I will do my friend the justice to say, that he nobly shared some

portion of his good fortune with me. As far as the creature comforts

were concerned I feasted as well as he, and never was particular as to

settling my share of the reckoning.

Jack now changed his lodgings; had cards, with Captain Attwood engraved

on them, and drove about a prancing cab-horse, as tall as the giraffe at

the Jardin des Plantes; he had as many frogs on his coat as in the old

days, and frequented all the flash restaurateurs and boarding-houses of

the capital. Madame de Saint Laurent, and Madame la Baronne de Vaudry,

and Madame la Comtesse de Don Jonville, ladies of the highest rank, who

keep a _société choisie_, and condescend to give dinners at five francs

a head, vied with each other in their attentions to Jack. His was the

wing of the fowl, and the largest portion of the Charlotte-Russe; his

was the place at the écarté table, where the Countess would ease him

nightly of a few pieces, declaring that he was the most charming

cavalier, _la fleur d’Albion_. Jack’s society, it may be seen, was not

very select; nor, in truth, were his inclinations: he was a careless,

dare-devil, Macheath kind of fellow, who might be seen daily with a wife

on each arm.

It may be supposed that, with the life he led, his five hundred pounds

of winnings would not last him long; nor did they; but for some time,

his luck never deserted him; and his cash, instead of growing lower,

seemed always to maintain a certain level;--he played every night.

Of course, such a humble fellow as I could not hope for a continued

acquaintance and intimacy with Attwood. He grew overbearing and cool, I

thought; at any rate I did not admire my situation as his follower and

dependant, and left his grand dinner for a certain ordinary where I

could partake of five capital dishes for ninepence. Occasionally,

however, Attwood favoured me with a visit, or gave me a drive behind his

great cab-horse. He had formed a whole host of friends besides. There

was Fips, the barrister, Heaven knows what he was doing at Paris; and

Gortz, the West Indian, who was there on the same business; and Flapper,

a medical student,--all these three I met one night at Flapper’s rooms,

where Jack was invited, and a great ‘spread’ was laid in honour of him.

Jack arrived rather late--he looked pale and agitated; and, though he

ate no supper, he drank raw brandy in such a manner as made Flapper’s

eyes wink: the poor fellow had but three bottles, and Jack bid fair to

swallow them all. However, the West Indian generously remedied the evil,

and, producing a napoleon, we speedily got the change for it in the

shape of four bottles of champagne.

Our supper was uproariously harmonious; Fips sang the ‘Good Old English

Gentleman;’ Jack, the ‘British Grenadiers;’ and your humble servant,

when called upon, sang that beautiful ditty, ‘When the Bloom is on the

Rye,’ in a manner that drew tears from every eye, except Flapper’s, who

was asleep, and Jack’s, who was singing the ‘Bay of Biscay, O,’ at the

same time. Gortz and Fips were all the time lunging at each other with a

pair of single-sticks, the barrister having a very strong notion that he

was Richard the Third.

At last Fips hit the West Indian such a blow across his sconce, that the

other grew furious; he seized a champagne-bottle, which was,

providentially, empty, and hurled it across the room at Fips; had that

celebrated barrister not bowed his head at the moment, the Queen’s Bench

would have lost one of its most eloquent practitioners.

Fips stood as straight as he could; his cheek was pale with wrath.

‘M-m-ister Go-gortz,’ he said, ‘I always heard you were a blackguard;

now I can pr-pr-peperove it. Flapper, your pistols! every ge-ge-genlmn

knows what I mean.’

Young Mr. Flapper had a small pair of pocket-pistols, which the tipsy

barrister had suddenly remembered, and with which he proposed to

sacrifice the West Indian. Gortz was nothing loth, but was quite as

valorous as the lawyer.

Attwood, who, in spite of his potations, seemed the soberest man of the

party, had much enjoyed the scene, until this sudden demand for the

weapons. ‘Pshaw!’ said he eagerly, ‘don’t give these men the means of

murdering each other; sit down and let us have another song.’ But they

would not be still; and Flapper forthwith produced his pistol-case, and

opened it, in order that the duel might take place on the spot. There

were no pistols there! ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Attwood, looking much

confused; ‘I--I took the pistols home with me to clean them!’

I don’t know what there was in his tone, or in the words, but we were

sobered all of a sudden. Attwood was conscious of the singular effect

produced by him, for he blushed, and endeavoured to speak of other

things, but we could not bring our spirits back to the mark again, and

soon separated for the night. As we issued into the street, Jack took me

aside and whispered, ‘Have you a napoleon, Titmarsh, in your purse?’

Alas! I was not so rich. My reply was, that I was coming to Jack, only

in the morning, to borrow a similar sum.

He did not make any reply, but turned away homeward: I never heard him

speak another word.

* * * * *

Two mornings after (for none of our party met on the day succeeding the

supper), I was awakened by my porter, who brought a pressing letter from

Mr. Gortz:--

‘DEAR T.--I wish you would come over here to breakfast. There’s a

row about Attwood.--Yours truly, SOLOMON GORTZ.’

I immediately set forward to Gortz’s; he lived in the Rue du Heldes, a

few doors from Attwood’s new lodging. If the reader is curious to know

the house in which the catastrophe of this history took place, he has

but to march some twenty doors down from the Boulevard des Italiens,

when he will see a fine door, with a naked Cupid shooting at him from

the hall, and a Venus beckoning him up the stairs. On arriving at the

West Indian’s, at about midday (it was a Sunday morning), I found that

gentleman in his dressing-gown, discussing, in the company of Mr. Fips,

a large plate of _bifteck aux pommes_.

‘Here’s a pretty row!’ said Gortz, quoting from his letter;--‘Attwood’s

off--have a bit of beefsteak?’

‘What do you mean?’ exclaimed I, adopting the familiar phraseology of my

acquaintances:--‘Attwood off?--has he cut his stick?’

‘Not bad,’ said the feeling and elegant Fips--‘not such a bad guess, my

boy; but he has not exactly _cut his stick_.’

‘What then?’

‘_Why, his throat._’ The man’s mouth was full of bleeding beef as he

uttered this gentlemanly witticism.

I wish I could say that I was myself in the least affected by the news.

I did not joke about it like my friend Fips; this was more for

propriety’s sake than for feeling’s: but for my old school acquaintance,

the friend of my early days, the merry associate of the last few months,

I own, with shame, that I had not a tear or a pang. In some German tale

there is an account of a creature, most beautiful and bewitching, whom

all men admire and follow; but this charming and fantastic spirit only

leads them, one by one, into ruin, and then leaves them. The novelist,

who describes her beauty, says that his heroine is a fairy, and _has no

heart_. I think the intimacy which is begotten over the wine-bottle is a

spirit of this nature; I never knew a good feeling come from it, or an

honest friendship made by it: it only entices men, and ruins them; it is

only a phantom of friendship and feeling, called up by the delirious

blood, and the wicked spells of the wine.

But to drop this strain of moralising (in which the writer is not too

anxious to proceed, for he cuts in it a most pitiful figure), we passed

sundry criticisms upon poor Attwood’s character, expressed our horror at

his death, which sentiment was fully proved by Mr. Fips, who declared

that the notion of it made him feel quite faint, and was obliged to

drink a large glass of brandy; and, finally, we agreed that we would go

and see the poor fellow’s corpse, and witness, if necessary, his burial.

Flapper, who had joined us, was the first to propose this visit: he said

he did not mind the fifteen francs which Jack owed him for billiards,

but that he was anxious to _get back his pistol_. Accordingly, we

sallied forth, and speedily arrived at the hotel which Attwood inhabited

still. He had occupied, for a time, very fine apartments in this house;

and it was only on arriving there that day, that we found he had been

gradually driven from his magnificent suite of rooms _au premier_, to a

little chamber in the fifth story:--we mounted, and found him. It was a

little shabby room, with a few articles of rickety furniture, and a bed

in an alcove; the light from the one window was falling full upon the

bed and the body. Jack was dressed in a fine lawn shirt: he had kept it,

poor fellow, _to die in_; for in all his drawers and cupboards, there

was not a single article of clothing: he had pawned everything by which

he could raise a penny--desk, books, dressing-case, and clothes; and

not a single halfpenny was found in his possession.[2]

He was lying as I have drawn him, one hand on his breast, the other

falling towards the ground. There was an expression of perfect calm on

the face, and no mark of blood to stain the side towards the light. On

the other side, however, there was a great pool of black blood, and in

it the pistol; it looked more like a toy than a weapon to take away the

life of this vigorous young man. In his forehead, at the side, was a

small black wound; Jack’s life had passed through it; it was little

bigger than a mole.

* * * * *

‘Regardez un peu,’ said the landlady; ‘messieurs, il m’a gâté trois

matelas, et il me doit quarante quatre francs.’

[Illustration]

This was all his epitaph: he had spoiled three mattresses, and owed the

landlady four-and-forty francs. In the whole world there was not a soul

to love him or lament him. We, his friends, were looking at his body

more as an object of curiosity, watching it with a kind of interest with

which one follows the fifth act of a tragedy, and leaving it with the

same feeling with which one leaves the theatre when the play is over and

the curtain is down.

Beside Jack’s bed, on his little _table de nuit_, lay the remains of his

last meal, and an open letter, which we read. It was from one of his

suspicious acquaintances of former days, and ran thus:--

‘Où es-tu, cher Jack? _why you not come and see me_--tu me dois de

l’argent, entends tu?--un chapeau, une cachemire, _a box of the

Play_. Viens demain soir, je t’attendrai _at eight o’clock_,

Passage des Panoramas. _My Sir is at his country._--Adieu à demain.

‘_Samedi_.’ ‘FIFINE.

I shuddered as I walked through this very Passage des Panoramas, in the

evening. The girl was there, pacing to and fro, and looking in the

countenance of every passer-by, to recognise Attwood. ‘ADIEU À

DEMAIN!’--there was a dreadful meaning in the words, which the writer of

them little knew. ‘Adieu à demain!’--the morrow was come, and the soul

of the poor suicide was now in the presence of God. I dare not think of

his fate; for, except in the fact of his poverty and desperation, was he

worse than any of us, his companions, who had shared his debauches, and

marched with him up to the very brink of the grave?

There is but one more circumstance to relate regarding poor Jack--his

burial; it was of a piece with his death.

He was nailed into a paltry coffin and buried, at the expense of the

arrondissement, in a nook of the burial-place beyond the Barrière de

l’Étoile. They buried him at six o’clock, of a bitter winter’s morning,

and it was with difficulty that an English clergyman could be found to

read a service over his grave. The three men who have figured in this

history acted as Jack’s mourners; and as the ceremony was to take place

so early in the morning, these men sat up the night through, _and were

almost drunk_ as they followed his coffin to its resting-place.

MORAL

‘When we turned out in our greatcoats,’ said one of them afterwards,

‘reeking of cigars and brandy-and-water, d----e, sir, we quite

frightened the old buck of a parson; he did not much like our company.’

After the ceremony was concluded, these gentlemen were very happy to get

home to a warm and comfortable breakfast, and finished the day royally

at Frascati’s.

[Illustration]

NAPOLEON AND HIS SYSTEM

ON PRINCE LOUIS NAPOLEON’S WORK

Any person who recollects the history of the absurd outbreak of

Strasburg, in which Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte figured, three years

ago, must remember that, however silly the revolt was, however foolish

its pretext, however doubtful its aim, and inexperienced its leader,

there was, nevertheless, a party, and a considerable one, in France,

that were not unwilling to lend the new projectors their aid. The troops

who declared against the Prince, were, it was said, all but willing to

declare for him; and it was certain that, in many of the regiments of

the army, there existed a strong spirit of disaffection, and an eager

wish for the return of the imperial system and family.

As to the good that was to be derived from the change, that is another

question. Why the Emperor of the French should be better than the King

of the French, or the King of the French better than the King of France

and Navarre, it is not our business to inquire; but all the three

monarchs have no lack of supporters; republicanism has no lack of

supporters; St. Simonianism was followed by a respectable body of

admirers; Robespierrism has a select party of friends. If, in a country

where so many quacks have had their day, Prince Louis Napoleon thought

he might renew the imperial quackery, why should he not? It has

recollections with it that must always be dear to a gallant nation; it

has certain claptraps in its vocabulary that can never fail to inflame a

vain, restless, grasping, disappointed one.

In the first place, and don’t let us endeavour to disguise it, they hate

us. Not all the protestations of friendship, not all the wisdom of Lord

Palmerston, not all the diplomacy of our distinguished plenipotentiary,

Mr. Henry Lytton Bulwer--and, let us add, not all the benefit which both

countries would derive from the alliance--can make it, in our times at

least, permanent and cordial. They hate us. The Carlist organs revile us

with a querulous fury that never sleeps; the moderate party, if they

admit the utility of our alliance, are continually pointing out our

treachery, our insolence, and our monstrous infractions of it; and for

the Republicans, as sure as the morning comes, the columns of their

journals thunder out volleys of fierce denunciations against our

unfortunate country. They live by feeding the natural hatred against

England, by keeping old wounds open, by recurring ceaselessly to the

history of old quarrels; and as in these we, by God’s help, by land and

by sea, in old times and late, have had the uppermost, they perpetuate

the shame and mortification of the losing party, the bitterness of past

defeats, and the eager desire to avenge them. A party which knows how to

_exploiter_ this hatred will always be popular to a certain extent; and

the imperial scheme has this, at least, among its conditions.

Then there is the favourite claptrap of the ‘natural frontier.’ The

Frenchman yearns to be bounded by the Rhine and the Alps; and next

follows the cry, ‘Let France take her place among nations, and direct,

as she ought to do, the affairs of Europe.’ These are the two chief

articles contained in the new imperial programme, if we may credit the

journal which has been established to advocate the cause. A natural

boundary--stand among the nations--popular development--Russian

alliance, and a reduction of _la perfide Albion_ to its proper

insignificance. As yet we know little more of the plan: and yet such

foundations are sufficient to build a party upon, and with such windy

weapons a substantial Government is to be overthrown!

In order to give these doctrines, such as they are, a chance of finding

favour with his countrymen, Prince Louis has the advantage of being able

to refer to a former great professor of them--his uncle Napoleon. His

attempt is at once pious and prudent; it exalts the memory of the uncle,

and furthers the interests of the nephew, who attempts to show what

Napoleon’s ideas really were; what good had already resulted from the

practice of them; how cruelly they had been thwarted by foreign wars and

difficulties; and what vast benefits _would_ have resulted from them;

ay, and (it is reasonable to conclude) might still, if the French nation

would be wise enough to pitch upon a governor that would continue the

interrupted scheme. It is, however, to be borne in mind that the Emperor

Napoleon had certain arguments in favour of his opinions for the time

being, which his nephew has not employed. On the 13th Vendémiaire, when

General Bonaparte believed in the excellence of a Directory, it may be

remembered that he aided his opinions by forty pieces of artillery, and

by Colonel Murat at the head of his dragoons. There was no resisting

such a philosopher; the Directory was established forthwith, and the

sacred cause of the minority triumphed. In like manner, when the General

was convinced of the weakness of the Directory, and saw fully the

necessity of establishing a Consulate, what were his arguments? Moreau,

Lannes, Murat, Berthier, Leclerc, Lefebvre--gentle apostles of the

truth!--marched to St. Cloud, and there, with fixed bayonets, caused it

to prevail. Error vanished in an instant. At once five hundred of its

high priests tumbled out of windows, and lo! three Consuls appeared to

guide the destinies of France! How much more expeditious, reasonable,

and clinching was this argument of the 18th Brumaire, than any one that

can be found in any pamphlet! A fig for your duodecimos and octavos!

Talk about points, there are none like those at the end of a bayonet;

and the most powerful of styles is a good rattling ‘article’ from a

nine-pounder.

At least this is our interpretation of the manner in which were always

propagated the _Idées Napoléoniennes_. Not such, however, is Prince

Louis’s belief; and, if you wish to go along with him in opinion, you

will discover that a more liberal, peaceable, prudent Prince never

existed: you will read that ‘the mission of Napoleon’ was to be the

‘_testamentary executor of the Revolution_;’ and the Prince should have

added, the legatee; or, more justly still, as well as the _executor_, he

should be called the _executioner_, and then his title would be

complete. In Vendémiaire, the military Tartuffe, he threw aside the

Revolution’s natural heirs, and made her, as it were, _alter her will_;

on the 18th of Brumaire he strangled her, and on the 19th seized on her

property, and kept it until force deprived him of it. Illustrations, to

be sure, are no arguments, but the example is the Prince’s, not ours.

In the Prince’s eyes, then, his uncle is a god; of all monarchs the most

wise, upright, and merciful. Thirty years ago the opinion had millions

of supporters; while millions again were ready to avouch the exact

contrary. It is curious to think of the former difference of opinion

concerning Napoleon; and in reading his nephew’s rapturous encomiums of

him, one goes back to the days when we ourselves were as loud and mad in

his dispraise. Who does not remember his own personal hatred and horror,

twenty-five years ago, for the man whom we used to call the ‘bloody

Corsican upstart and assassin’? What stories did we not believe of

him?--what murders, rapes, robberies, not lay to his charge?--we, who

were living within a few miles of his territory, and might, by books and

newspapers, be made as well acquainted with his merits or demerits as

any of his own countrymen.

Then was the age when the _Idées Napoléoniennes_ might have passed

through many editions; for while we were thus outrageously bitter, our

neighbours were as extravagantly attached to him by a strange

infatuation--adored him like a god, whom we chose to consider as a

fiend; and vowed that, under his government, their nation had attained

its highest pitch of grandeur and glory. In revenge there existed in

England (as is proved by a thousand authentic documents) a monster so

hideous, a tyrant so ruthless and bloody, that the world’s history

cannot show his parallel. This ruffian’s name was, during the early part

of the French Revolution, Pittetcobourg. Pittetcobourg’s emissaries were

in every corner of France; Pittetcobourg’s gold chinked in the pockets

of every traitor in Europe; it menaced the life of the godlike

Robespierre; it drove into cellars and fits of delirium even the gentle

philanthropist Marat; it fourteen times caused the dagger to be lifted

against the bosom of the First Consul, Emperor, and King,--that first,

great, glorious, irresistible, cowardly, contemptible, bloody hero and

fiend, Bonaparte, before mentioned.

On our side of the Channel we have had leisure, long since, to

reconsider our verdict against Napoleon; though, to be sure, we have not

changed our opinion about Pittetcobourg. After five-and-thirty years all

parties bear witness to his honesty, and speak with affectionate

reverence of his patriotism, his genius, and his private virtue. In

France, however, or, at least, among certain parties in France, there

has been no such modification of opinion. With the Republicans,

Pittetcobourg is Pittetcobourg still,--crafty, bloody, seeking whom he

may devour; and _perfide Albion_ more perfidious than ever. This hatred

is the point of union between the Republic and the Empire; it has been

fostered ever since, and must be continued by Prince Louis, if he would

hope to conciliate both parties.

With regard to the Emperor, then, Prince Louis erects to his memory as

fine a monument as his wits can raise. One need not say that the

imperial apologist’s opinion should be received with the utmost caution;

for a man who has such a hero for an uncle may naturally be proud of and

partial to him; and when this nephew of the great man would be his heir,

likewise, and, bearing his name, step also into his imperial shoes, one

may reasonably look for much affectionate panegyric. ‘The Empire was the

best of empires,’ cries the Prince; and possibly it was; undoubtedly,

the Prince thinks it was; but he is the very last person who would

convince a man with a proper suspicious impartiality. One remembers a

certain consultation of politicians which is recorded in the

Spelling-book; and the opinion of that patriotic sage who averred that,

for a real blameless constitution, an impenetrable shield for liberty,

and cheap defence of nations, there was nothing like leather.

Let us examine some of the Prince’s article. If we may be allowed humbly

to express an opinion, his leather is not only quite insufficient for

those vast public purposes for which he destines it, but is, moreover,

and in itself, very _bad leather_. The hides are poor, small, unsound

slips of skin; or, to drop this cobbling metaphor, the style is not

particularly brilliant, the facts not very startling, and, as for the

conclusions, one may differ with almost every one of them. Here is an

extract from his first chapter, ‘On Governments in General:’--

‘I speak it with regret, I can see but two Governments, at this

day, which fulfil the mission that Providence has confided to them;

they are the two colossi at the end of the world; one at the

extremity of the old world, the other at the extremity of the new.

Whilst our old European centre is as a volcano, consuming itself in

its crater, the two nations of the East and the West march, without

hesitation, towards perfection; the one under the will of a single

individual, the other under liberty.

‘Providence has confided to the United States of North America the

task of peopling and civilising that immense territory which

stretches from the Atlantic to the South Sea, and from the North

Pole to the Equator. The Government, which is only a simple

administration, has only hitherto been called upon to put in

practice the old adage, _Laissez faire, laissez passer_, in order

to favour that irresistible instinct which pushes the people of

America to the west.

‘In Russia it is to the imperial dynasty that is owing all the vast

progress which, in a century and a-half, has rescued that empire

from barbarism. The imperial power must contend against all the

ancient prejudices of our old Europe: it must centralise, as far as

possible, all the powers of the State in the hands of one person,

in order to destroy the abuses which the feudal and communal

franchises have served to perpetuate. The last alone can hope to

receive from it the improvements which it expects.

‘But thou, France of Henry IV., of Louis XIV., of Carnot, of

Napoleon--thou, who wert always for the west of Europe the source

of progress, who possessest in thyself the two great pillars of

empire, the genius for the arts of peace, and the genius of

war--hast thou no further passion to fulfil? Wilt thou never cease

to waste thy force and energies in intestine struggles? No; such

cannot be thy destiny: the day will soon come, when, to govern

thee, it will be necessary to understand that thy part is to place

in all treaties thy sword of Brennus on the side of civilisation.’

These are the conclusions of the Prince’s remarks upon Governments in

general; and it must be supposed that the reader is very little wiser at

the end than at the beginning. But two Governments in the world fulfil

their mission: the one Government, which is no Government; the other,

which is a despotism. The duty of France is _in all treaties_ to place

her sword of Brennus in the scale of civilisation. Without quarrelling

with the somewhat confused language of the latter proposition, may we

ask what, in Heaven’s name, is the meaning of all the three? What is

this _épée de Brennus_? and how is France to use it? Where is the great

source of political truth, from which, flowing pure, we trace American

republicanism in one stream, Russian despotism in another? Vastly

prosperous is the great republic, if you will: if dollars and cents

constitute happiness, there is plenty for all: but can any one, who has

read of the American doings in the late frontier troubles, and the daily

disputes on the slave question, praise the _Government_ of the

States?--a Government which dares not punish homicide or arson performed

before its very eyes, and which the pirates of Texas and the pirates of

Canada can brave at their will? There is no Government, but a prosperous

anarchy; as the Prince’s other favourite Government is a prosperous

slavery. What, then, is to be the _épée de Brennus_ Government? Is it to

be a mixture of the two? ‘Society,’ writes the Prince axiomatically,

‘contains in itself two principles--the one of progress and immortality,

the other of disease and disorganisation.’ No doubt; and as the one

tends towards liberty, so the other is only to be cured by order: and

then, with a singular felicity, Prince Louis picks us out a couple of

Governments, in one of which the common regulating power is as

notoriously too weak, as it is in the other too strong, and talks in

rapturous terms of the manner in which they fulfil their ‘providential

mission’!

From these considerations on things in general, the Prince conducts us

to Napoleon in particular, and enters largely into a discussion of the

merits of the imperial system. Our author speaks of the Emperor’s advent

in the following grandiose way:--

‘Napoleon, on arriving at the public stage, saw that his part was

to be the _testamentary executor_ of the Revolution. The

destructive fire of parties was extinct; and when the Revolution,

dying, but not vanquished, delegated to Napoleon the accomplishment

of her last will, she said to him, “Establish upon solid bases the

principal result of my efforts. Unite divided Frenchmen. Defeat

feudal Europe that is leagued against me. Cicatrise my wounds.

Enlighten the nations. Execute that in width, which I have had to

perform in depth. Be for Europe what I have been for France. And,

even if you must water the tree of civilisation with your blood--if

you must see your projects misunderstood, and your sons without a

country, wandering over the face of the earth, never abandon the

sacred cause of the French people. Ensure its triumph by all the

means which genius can discover and humanity approve.”

‘This grand mission Napoleon performed to the end. His task was

difficult. He had to place upon new principles a society still

boiling with hatred and revenge; and to use, for building up, the

same instruments which had been employed for pulling down.

‘The common lot of every new truth that arises, is to wound rather

than to convince--rather than to gain proselytes, to awaken fear.

For, oppressed as it long has been, it rushes forward with

additional force; having to encounter obstacles, it is compelled to

combat them, and overthrow them; until, at length, comprehended and

adopted by the generality, it becomes the basis of new social

order.

‘Liberty will follow the same march as the Christian religion.

Armed with death from the ancient society of Rome, it for a long

while excited the hatred and fear of the people. At last, by force

of martyrdoms and persecutions, the religion of Christ penetrated

into the conscience and the soul; it soon had kings and armies at

its orders, and Constantine and Charlemagne bore it triumphant

throughout Europe. Religion then laid down her arms of war. It laid

open to all the principles of peace and order which it contained;

it became the prop of Government, as it was the organising element

of society. Thus will it be with liberty. In 1793 it frightened

people and sovereigns alike; thus, having clothed itself in a

milder garb, _it insinuated itself everywhere in the train of our

battalions_. In 1815 all parties adopted its flag, and armed

themselves with its moral force--covered themselves with its

colours. The adoption was not sincere, and liberty was soon obliged

to reassume its warlike accoutrements. With the contest their fears

returned. Let us hope that they will soon cease, and that liberty

will soon resume her peaceful standards, to quit them no more.

‘The Emperor Napoleon contributed more than any one else towards

accelerating the reign of liberty, by saving the moral influence of

the Revolution, and diminishing the fears which it imposed. Without

the Consulate and the Empire, the Revolution would have been only a

grand drama, leaving grand revolutions but no traces: the

Revolution would have been drowned in the counter-revolution. The

contrary, however, was the case. Napoleon rooted the Revolution in

France, and introduced, throughout Europe, the principal benefits

of the crisis of 1789. To use his own words, “He purified the

Revolution,” he confirmed kings, and ennobled people. He purified

the Revolution in separating the truths which it contained from the

passions that, during its delirium, disfigured it. He ennobled the

people in giving them the consciousness of their force, and those

institutions which raise men in their own eyes. The Emperor may be

considered as the Messiah of the new ideas; for--and we must

confess it--in the moments immediately succeeding a social

revolution, it is not so essential to put rigidly into practice all

the propositions resulting from the new theory, but to become

master of the regenerative genius, to identify one’s self with the

sentiments of the people, and boldly to direct them towards the

desired point. To accomplish such a task _your fibre should respond

to that of the people_, as the Emperor said; you should feel like

it, your interests should be so intimately raised with its own,

that you should vanquish or fall together.’

Let us take breath after these big phrases,--grand round figures of

speech,--which, when put together, amount, like certain other

combinations of round figures, to exactly 0. We shall not stop to argue

the merits and demerits of Prince Louis’s notable comparison between the

Christian religion and the Imperial-revolutionary system. There are many

blunders in the above extract as we read it; blundering metaphors,

blundering arguments, and blundering assertions; but this is surely the

grandest blunder of all; and one wonders at the blindness of the

legislator and historian who can advance such a parallel. And what are

we to say of the legacy of the dying Revolution to Napoleon? Revolutions

do not die, and, on their deathbeds, making fine speeches, hand over

their property to young officers of artillery. We have all read the

history of his rise. The constitution of the year III. was carried. Old

men of the Montagne, disguised royalists, Paris sections,

_Pittetcobourg_, above all, with his money-bags, thought that here was a

fine opportunity for a revolt, and opposed the new constitution in arms:

the new constitution had knowledge of a young officer, who would not

hesitate to defend its cause, and who effectually beat the majority. The

tale may be found in every account of the Revolution, and the rest of

his story need not be told. We know every step that he took: we know

how, by doses of cannon-balls promptly administered, he cured the fever

of the sections--that fever which another camp-physician (Menou)

declined to prescribe for; we know how he abolished the Directory; and

how the Consulship came; and then the Empire; and then the disgrace,

exile, and lonely death. Has not all this been written by historians in

all tongues?--by memoir-writing pages, chamberlains, marshals, lackeys,

secretaries, contemporaries, and ladies-of-honour? Not a word of miracle

is there in all this narration; not a word of celestial missions, or

political Messiahs. From Napoleon’s rise to his fall, the bayonet

marches alongside of him: now he points it at the tails of the ‘five

hundred,’--now he charges with it across the bloody Arcola--now he flies

before it over the fatal plain of Waterloo.

Unwilling, however, as he may be to grant that there are any spots in

the character of his hero’s government, the Prince is, nevertheless,

obliged to allow that such existed; that the Emperor’s manner of rule

was a little more abrupt and dictatorial than might possibly be

agreeable. For this the Prince has always an answer ready--it is the

same poor one that Napoleon uttered a million of times to his companions

in exile--the excuse of necessity. He _would_ have been very liberal,

but that the people were not fit for it; or that the cursed war

prevented him--or any other reason why. His first duty, however, says

his apologist, was to form a general union of Frenchmen, and he set

about his plan in this wise:--

‘Let us not forget, that all which Napoleon undertook, in order to

create a general fusion, he performed without renouncing the

principles of the Revolution. He recalled the _émigrés_, without

touching upon the law by which their goods had been confiscated and

sold as public property. He re-established the Catholic religion at

the same time that he proclaimed the liberty of conscience, and

endowed equally the ministers of all sects. He caused himself to be

consecrated by the Sovereign Pontiff, without conceding to the

Pope’s demand any of the liberties of the Gallican Church. He

married a daughter of the Emperor of Austria, without abandoning

any of the rights of France to the conquests she had made. He

re-established noble titles, without attaching to them any

privileges or prerogatives, and these titles were conferred on all

ranks, on all services, on all professions. Under the Empire all

idea of caste was destroyed; no man ever thought of vaunting his

pedigree--no man ever was asked how he was born, but what he had

done.

‘The first quality of a people which aspires to liberal government

is respect to the law. Now, a law has no other power than lies in

the interest which each citizen has to defend or to contravene it.

In order to make a people respect the law, it was necessary that it

should be executed in the interest of all, and should consecrate

the principle of equality in all its extension. It was necessary to

restore the _prestige_ with which the Government had been formerly

invested, and to make the principles of the Revolution take root in

the public manners. At the commencement of a new society, it is the

legislator who makes or corrects the manners; later, it is the

manners which make the law, or preserve it, from age to age

intact.’

Some of these fusions are amusing. No man in the Empire was asked how he

was born, but what he had done; and, accordingly, as a man’s actions

were sufficient to illustrate him, the Emperor took care to make a host

of new title-bearers, princes, dukes, barons, and what not, whose rank

has descended to their children. He married a princess of Austria; but,

for all that, did not abandon his conquests--perhaps not actually; but

he abandoned his allies, and, eventually, his whole kingdom. Who does

not recollect his answer to the Poles, at the commencement of the

Russian campaign? But for Napoleon’s imperial father-in-law, Poland

would have been a kingdom, and his race, perhaps, imperial still. Why

was he to fetch this princess out of Austria to make heirs for his

throne? Why did not the man of the people marry a girl of the people?

Why must he have a Pope to crown him--half a dozen kings for brothers,

and a bevy of aides-de-camp dressed out like so many mountebanks from

Astley’s, with dukes’ coronets, and grand blue velvet marshals’ batons?

We have repeatedly his words for it. He wanted to create an

aristocracy--another acknowledgment on his part of the Republican

dilemma--another apology for the Revolutionary blunder. To keep the

Republic within bounds, a despotism is necessary; to rally round the

despotism, an aristocracy must be created; and for what have we been

labouring all this while? for what have bastiles been battered down, and

kings’ heads hurled, as a gage of battle, in the face of armed Europe?

To have a Duke of Otranto instead of a Duke de la Trémoille, and Emperor

Stork in place of King Log. Oh, lame conclusion! Is the blessed

Revolution which is prophesied for us in England only to end in

establishing a Prince Fergus O’Connor, or a Cardinal Wade, or a Duke of

Daniel Whittle Harvey? Great as those patriots are, we love them better

under their simple family names, and scorn titles and coronets.

At present, in France, the delicate matter of titles seems to be better

arranged, any gentleman, since the Revolution, being free to adopt any

one he may fix upon; and it appears that the Crown no longer confers any

patents of nobility, but contents itself with saying, as in the case of

M. de Pontois, the other day, ‘_Le Roi trouve convenable_ that you take

the title of,’ etc.

To execute the legacy of the Revolution, then; to fulfil his

providential mission; to keep his place,--in other words, for the

simplest are always the best,--to keep his place, and to keep his

Government in decent order, the Emperor was obliged to establish a

military despotism, to re-establish honours and titles; it was

necessary, as the Prince confesses, to restore the old _prestige_ of the

Government, in order to make the people respect it; and he adds--a truth

which one hardly would expect from him,--‘At the commencement of a new

society, it is the legislator who makes and corrects the manners; later,

it is the manners which preserve the laws.’ Of course, and here is the

great risk that all revolutionising people run; they must tend to

despotism; ‘they must personify themselves in a man,’ is the Prince’s

phrase: and, according as is his temperament or disposition--according

as he is a Cromwell, a Washington, or a Napoleon--the Revolution becomes

tyranny or freedom, prospers or falls.

Somewhere in the St. Helena memorials, Napoleon reports a message of his

to the Pope. ‘Tell the Pope,’ he says to an archbishop, ‘to remember

that I have six hundred thousand armed Frenchmen, _qui marcheront avec

moi, pour moi, et comme moi_.’ And this is the legacy of the Revolution,

the advancement of freedom! A hundred volumes of imperial special

pleading will not avail against such a speech as this--one so insolent,

and at the same time so humiliating, which gives unwittingly the whole

of the Emperor’s progress, strength, and weakness. The six hundred

thousand armed Frenchmen were used up, and the whole fabric falls; the

six hundred thousand are reduced to sixty thousand, and straightway all

the rest of the fine imperial scheme vanishes: the miserable senate, so

crawling and abject but now, becomes, of a sudden, endowed with a

wondrous independence; the miserable sham nobles, sham Empress, sham

kings, dukes, princes, chamberlains, pack up their plumes and

embroideries, pounce upon what money and plate they can lay their hands

on, and when the Allies appear before Paris, when for courage and

manliness there is yet hope, when with fierce marches hastening to the

relief of his capital, bursting through ranks upon ranks of the enemy,

and crushing or scattering them from the path of his swift and

victorious despair, the Emperor at last is at home,--where are the great

dignitaries and the lieutenant-generals of the Empire? Where is Maria

Louisa, the Empress Eagle, with her little callow King of Rome? Is she

going to defend her nest and her eaglet? Not she. Empress-queen,

lieutenant-general, and court dignitaries are off on the wings of all

the winds--_profligati sunt_, they are away with the money-bags, and

Louis Stanislaus Xavier rolls into the palace of his fathers.

With regard to Napoleon’s excellences as an administrator, a legislator,

a constructor of public works, and a skilful financier, his nephew

speaks with much diffuse praise, and few persons, we suppose, will be

disposed to contradict him. Whether the Emperor composed his famous

code, or borrowed it, is of little importance; but he established it,

and made the law equal for every man in France except one. His vast

public works and vaster wars were carried on without new loans or

exorbitant taxes; it was only the blood and liberty of the people that

were taxed, and we shall want a better advocate than Prince Louis to

show us that these were not most unnecessarily and lavishly thrown away.

As for the former and material improvements, it is not necessary to

confess here that a despotic energy can effect such far more readily

than a Government of which the strength is diffused in many conflicting

parties. No doubt, if we could create a despotical governing machine, a

steam autocrat,--passionless, untiring, and supreme,--we should advance

farther, and live more at ease, than under any other form of government.

Ministers might enjoy their pensions and follow their own devices; Lord

John might compose histories or tragedies at his leisure, and Lord

Palmerston, instead of racking his brains to write leading articles for

Cupid, might crown his locks with flowers, and sing ἑρωτα μοὑνον, his

natural Anacreontics. But, alas! not so: if the despotic Government

has its good side, Prince Louis Napoleon must acknowledge that it has

its bad, and it is for this that the civilised world is compelled to

substitute for it something more orderly and less capricious. Good

as the Imperial Government might have been, it must be recollected,

too, that, since its first fall, both the Emperor and his admirer and

would-be successor have had their chance of re-establishing it. ‘Flying

from steeple to steeple,’ the eagles of the former did actually, and

according to promise, perch for a while on the towers of Notre-Dame.

We know the event: if the fate of war declared against the Emperor,

the country declared against him too; and, with old Lafayette for a

mouthpiece, the representatives of the nation did, in a neat speech,

pronounce themselves in permanence, but spoke no more of the Emperor

than if he had never been. Thereupon the Emperor proclaimed his son the

Emperor Napoleon II. ‘L’Empereur est mort, vive l’Empereur!’ shouted

Prince Lucien. Psha! not a soul echoed the words: the play was played,

and as for old Lafayette and his ‘permanent’ representatives, a corporal

with a hammer nailed up the door of their spouting-club, and once more

Louis Stanislaus Xavier rolled back to the bosom of his people.

In like manner Napoleon III. returned from exile, and made his

appearance on the frontier. His eagle appeared at Strasburg, and from

Strasburg advanced to the capital; but it arrived at Paris with a

keeper, and in a postchaise; whence, by the orders of the sovereign, it

was removed to the American shores, and there magnanimously let loose.

Who knows, however, how soon it may be on the wing again, and what a

flight it will take?

THE STORY OF MARY ANCEL

‘Go, my nephew,’ said old Father Jacob to me, ‘and complete thy studies

at Strasburg: Heaven surely hath ordained thee for the ministry in these

times of trouble, and my excellent friend Schneider will work out the

divine intention.’

Schneider was an old college friend of Uncle Jacob’s, was a Benedictine

monk, and a man famous for his learning; as for me, I was at that time

my uncle’s chorister, clerk, and sacristan; I swept the church, chanted

the prayers with my shrill treble, and swung the great copper

incense-pot on Sundays and feasts; and I toiled over the Fathers for the

other days of the week.

The old gentleman said that my progress was prodigious, and, without

vanity, I believe he was right, for I then verily considered that

praying was my vocation, and not fighting, as I have found since.

You would hardly conceive (said the Major, swearing a great oath) how

devout and how learned I was in those days; I talked Latin faster than

my own beautiful _patois_ of Alsatian French; I could utterly overthrow,

in argument, every Protestant (heretics we called them) parson in the

neighbourhood, and there was a confounded sprinkling of these

unbelievers in our part of the country. I prayed half a dozen times a

day; I fasted thrice in a week; and, as for penance, I used to scourge

my little sides, till they had no more feeling than a peg-top: such was

the godly life I led at my Uncle Jacob’s in the village of Steinbach.

Our family had long dwelt in this place, and a large farm and a pleasant

house were then in the possession of another uncle--Uncle Edward. He was

the youngest of the three sons of my grandfather; but Jacob, the elder,

had shown a decided vocation for the Church, from, I believe, the age of

three, and now was by no means tired of it at sixty. My father, who was

to have inherited the paternal property, was, as I hear, a terrible

scamp and scapegrace, quarrelled with his family, and disappeared

altogether, living and dying at Paris; so far we knew through my mother,

who came, poor woman, with me, a child of six months, on her bosom, was

refused all shelter by my grandfather, but was housed and kindly cared

for by my good Uncle Jacob.

Here she lived for about seven years, and the old gentleman, when she

died, wept over her grave a great deal more than I did, who was then too

young to mind anything but toys or sweetmeats.

During this time my grandfather was likewise carried off: he left, as I

said, the property to his son Edward, with a small proviso in his will

that something should be done for me, his grandson.

Edward was himself a widower, with one daughter, Mary, about three years

older than I, and certainly she was the dearest little treasure with

which Providence ever blessed a miserly father; by the time she was

fifteen, five farmers, three lawyers, twelve Protestant parsons, and a

lieutenant of Dragoons had made her offers: it must not be denied that

she was an heiress as well as a beauty, which, perhaps, had something to

do with the love of these gentlemen. However, Mary declared that she

intended to live single, turned away her lovers one after another, and

devoted herself to the care of her father.

Uncle Jacob was as fond of her as he was of any saint or martyr. As for

me, at the mature age of twelve I had made a kind of divinity of her,

and when we sang ‘Ave Maria’ on Sundays I could not refrain from turning

to her, where she knelt, blushing and praying and looking like an angel,

as she was. Besides her beauty, Mary had a thousand good qualities; she

could play better on the harpsichord, she could dance more lightly, she

could make better pickles and puddings, than any girl in Alsace; there

was not a want or a fancy of the old hunks, her father, or a wish of

mine or my uncle’s, that she would not gratify if she could; as for

herself, the sweet soul had neither wants nor wishes except to see us

happy.

I could talk to you for a year of all the pretty kindnesses that she

would do for me; how, when she found me of early mornings among my

books, her presence ‘would cast a light upon the day;’ how she used to

smooth and fold my little surplice, and embroider me caps and gowns for

high feast-days; how she used to bring flowers for the altar, and who

could deck it so well as she? But sentiment does not come glibly from

under a grizzled moustache, so I will drop it, if you please.

Amongst other favours she showed me, Mary used to be particularly fond

of kissing me: it was a thing I did not so much value in those days; but

I found that the more I grew alive to the extent of the benefit, the

less she would condescend to confer it on me; till, at last, when I was

about fourteen, she discontinued it altogether, of her own wish at

least; only sometimes I used to be rude, and take what she had now

become so mighty unwilling to give.

[Illustration: MARY ANCEL]

I was engaged in a contest of this sort one day with Mary, when, just as

I was about to carry off a kiss from her cheek, I was saluted with a

staggering slap on my own, which was bestowed by Uncle Edward, and sent

me reeling some yards down the garden.

The old gentleman, whose tongue was generally as close as his purse, now

poured forth a flood of eloquence which quite astonished me. I did not

think that so much was to be said on any subject as he managed to utter

on one, and that was abuse of me; he stamped, he swore, he screamed; and

then, from complimenting me, he turned to Mary, and saluted her in a

manner equally forcible and significant: she, who was very much

frightened at the commencement of the scene, grew very angry at the

coarse words he used, and the wicked motives he imputed to her.

‘The child is but fourteen,’ she said; ‘he is your own nephew, and a

candidate for holy orders:--Father, it is a shame that you should thus

speak of me, your daughter, or of one of his holy profession.’

I did not particularly admire this speech myself, but it had an effect

on my uncle, and was the cause of the words with which this history

commences. The old gentleman persuaded his brother that I must be sent

to Strasburg, and there kept until my studies for the Church were

concluded. I was furnished with a letter to my uncle’s old college chum,

Professor Schneider, who was to instruct me in theology and Greek.

I was not sorry to see Strasburg, of the wonders of which I had heard so

much; but felt very loth as the time drew near when I must quit my

pretty cousin and my good old uncle. Mary and I managed, however, a

parting walk, in which a number of tender things were said on both

sides. I am told that you Englishmen consider it cowardly to cry; as for

me, I wept and roared incessantly: when Mary squeezed me, for the last

time, the tears came out of me as if I had been neither more nor less

than a great wet sponge. My cousin’s eyes were stoically dry; her

ladyship had a part to play, and it would have been wrong for her to be

in love with a young chit of fourteen--so she carried herself with

perfect coolness, as if there was nothing the matter. I should not have

known that she cared for me, had it not been for a letter which she

wrote me a month afterwards--_then_, nobody was by, and the consequence

was that the letter was half washed away with her weeping: if she had

used a watering-pot the thing could not have been better done.

Well, I arrived at Strasburg--a dismal, old-fashioned, rickety town in

those days--and straightway presented myself and letter at Schneider’s

door; over it was written--

‘COMITÉ DE SALUT PUBLIC.’

Would you believe it? I was so ignorant a young fellow, that I had no

idea of the meaning of the words: however, I entered the citizen’s room

without fear, and sat down in his antechamber until I could be admitted

to see him.

Here I found very few indications of his reverence’s profession; the

walls were hung round with portraits of Robespierre, Marat, and the

like; a great bust of Mirabeau, mutilated, with the word _Tratîre_

underneath; lists and Republican proclamations, tobacco-pipes, and

firearms. At a deal table, stained with grease and wine, sat a gentleman

with a huge pigtail dangling down to that part of his person which

immediately succeeds his back, and a red nightcap containing a tricolour

cockade as large as a pancake. He was smoking a short pipe, reading a

little book, and sobbing as if his heart would break. Every now and then

he would make brief remarks upon the personages or the incidents of his

book, by which I could judge that he was a man of the very keenest

sensibilities--‘Ah, brigand!’ ‘Oh, malheureuse!’ ‘Oh, Charlotte,

Charlotte!’ The work which this gentleman was perusing is called _The

Sorrows of Werther_; it was all the rage in those days, and my friend

was only following the fashion. I asked him if I could see Father

Schneider. He turned towards me a hideous pimpled face, which I dream of

now at forty years’ distance.

‘Father who?’ said he. ‘Do you imagine that Citizen Schneider has not

thrown off the absurd mummery of priesthood? If you were a little older

you would go to prison for calling him Father Schneider--many a man has

died for less!’ And he pointed to a picture of a guillotine, which was

hanging in the room.

I was in amazement.

‘What is he? Is he not a teacher of Greek, an abbé, a monk, until

monasteries were abolished, the learned editor of the songs of

Anacreon?’

‘He _was_ all this,’ replied my grim friend; ‘he is now a Member of the

Committee of Public Safety, and would think no more of ordering your

head off than of drinking this tumbler of beer.’

He swallowed, himself, the frothy liquid, and then proceeded to give me

the history of the man to whom my uncle had sent me for instruction.

Schneider was born in 1756: was a student at Würzburg, and afterwards

entered a convent, where he remained nine years. He here became

distinguished for his learning and his talents as a preacher, and became

chaplain to Duke Charles of Würtemberg. The doctrines of the Illuminati

began about this time to spread in Germany, and Schneider speedily

joined the sect. He had been a professor of Greek at Cologne; and being

compelled, on account of his irregularity, to give up his chair, he

came to Strasburg at the commencement of the French Revolution, and

acted for some time a principal part as a revolutionary agent at

Strasburg.

[‘Heaven knows what would have happened to me had I continued long under

his tuition!’ said the Captain.’ I owe the preservation of my morals

entirely to my entering the army. A man, sir, who is a soldier, has very

little time to be wicked; except in the case of a siege and the sack of

a town, when a little licence can offend nobody.’]

By the time that my friend had concluded Schneider’s biography, we had

grown tolerably intimate, and I imparted to him (with that experience so

remarkable in youth) my whole history--my course of studies, my pleasant

country life, the names and qualities of my dear relations, and my

occupations in the vestry before religion was abolished by order of the

Republic. In the course of my speech I recurred so often to the name of

my cousin Mary, that the gentleman could not fail to perceive what a

tender place she had in my heart.

Then we reverted to _The Sorrows of Werther_, and discussed the merits

of that sublime performance. Although I had before felt some misgivings

about my new acquaintance, my heart now quite yearned towards him. He

talked about love and sentiment in a manner which made me recollect that

I was in love myself; and you know that when a man is in that condition,

his taste is not very refined, any maudlin trash of prose or verse

appearing sublime to him, provided it correspond, in some degree, with

his own situation.

‘Candid youth!’ cried my unknown, ‘I love to hear thy innocent story,

and look on thy guileless face. There is, alas! so much of the contrary

in this world, so much terror and crime and blood, that we who mingle

with it are only too glad to forget it. Would that we could shake off

our cares as men, and be boys, as thou art, again!’

Here my friend began to weep once more, and fondly shook my hand. I

blessed my stars that I had, at the very outset of my career, met with

one who was so likely to aid me. What a slanderous world it is! thought

I; the people in our village call these Republicans wicked and

bloody-minded; a lamb could not be more tender than this sentimental

bottle-nosed gentleman! The worthy man then gave me to understand that

he held a place under Government. I was busy in endeavouring to discover

what his situation might be, when the door of the next apartment opened,

and Schneider made his appearance.

At first he did not notice me, but he advanced to my new acquaintance,

and gave him, to my astonishment, something very like a blow.

‘You drunken, talking fool,’ he said, ‘you are always after your time.

Fourteen people are cooling their heels yonder, waiting until you have

finished your beer and your sentiment!’

My friend slunk, muttering, out of the room.

‘That fellow,’ said Schneider, turning to me, ‘is our public

executioner: a capital hand, too, if he would but keep decent time; but

the brute is always drunk, and blubbering over _The Sorrows of

Werther!_’

* * * * *

I know not whether it was his old friendship for my uncle, or my proper

merits, which won the heart of this the sternest ruffian of

Robespierre’s crew; but certain it is, that he became strangely attached

to me, and kept me constantly about his person. As for the priesthood

and the Greek, they were of course very soon out of the question. The

Austrians were on our frontier; every day brought us accounts of battles

won; and the youth of Strasburg, and of all France, indeed, were

bursting with military ardour. As for me, I shared the general mania,

and speedily mounted a cockade as large as that of my friend the

executioner.

The occupations of this worthy were unremitting. St. Just, who had come

down from Paris to preside over our town, executed the laws and the

aristocrats with terrible punctuality; and Schneider used to make

country excursions in search of offenders, with this fellow, as a

provost-marshal, at his back. In the meantime, having entered my

sixteenth year, and being a proper lad of my age, I had joined a

regiment of cavalry, and was scampering now after the Austrians who

menaced us, and now threatening the _émigrés_, who were banded at

Coblentz. My love for my dear cousin increased as my whiskers grew; and

when I was scarcely seventeen, I thought myself man enough to marry her,

and to cut the throat of any one who should venture to say me nay.

I need not tell you that during my absence at Strasburg, great changes

had occurred in our little village, and somewhat of the revolutionary

rage had penetrated even to that quiet and distant place. The hideous

‘Fête of the Supreme Being’ had been celebrated at Paris; the practice

of our ancient religion was forbidden; its professors were most of them

in concealment, or in exile, or had expiated on the scaffold their crime

of Christianity. In our poor village my uncle’s church was closed, and

he, himself, an inmate in my brother’s house, only owing his safety to

his great popularity among his former flock and the influence of Edward

Ancel.

The latter had taken in the Revolution a somewhat prominent part; that

is, he had engaged in many contracts for the army, attended the clubs

regularly, corresponded with the authorities of his department, and was

loud in his denunciations of the aristocrats in his neighbourhood. But

owing, perhaps, to the German origin of the peasantry, and their quiet

and rustic lives, the revolutionary fury which prevailed in the cities

had hardly reached the country people. The occasional visit of a

commissary from Paris or Strasburg served to keep the flame alive, and

to remind the rural swains of the existence of a Republic in France.

Now and then, when I could gain a week’s leave of absence, I returned to

the village, and was received with tolerable politeness by my uncle, and

with a warmer feeling by his daughter.

I won’t describe to you the progress of our love, or the wrath of my

Uncle Edward when he discovered that it still continued. He swore and he

stormed; he locked Mary into her chamber, and vowed that he would

withdraw the allowance he made me, if ever I ventured near her. His

daughter, he said, should never marry a hopeless, penniless subaltern;

and Mary declared she would not marry without his consent. What had I to

do?--to despair and to leave her. As for my poor Uncle Jacob, he had no

counsel to give me, and, indeed, no spirit left: his little church was

turned into a stable, his surplice torn off his shoulders, and he was

only too lucky in keeping _his head_ on them. A bright thought struck

him: suppose you were to ask the advice of my old friend Schneider

regarding this marriage? he has ever been your friend, and may help you

now as before.

(Here the Captain paused a little.) You may fancy (continued he) that it

was droll advice of a reverend gentleman like Uncle Jacob to counsel me

in this manner, and to bid me make friends with such a murderous

cut-throat as Schneider; but we thought nothing of it in those days;

guillotining was as common as dancing, and a man was only thought the

better patriot the more severe he might be. I departed forthwith to

Strasburg, and requested the vote and interest of the Citizen President

of the Committee of Public Safety.

He heard me with a great deal of attention. I described to him most

minutely the circumstances, expatiated upon the charms of my dear Mary,

and painted her to him from head to foot. Her golden hair and her bright

blushing cheeks, her slim waist and her tripping tiny feet; and

furthermore, I added that she possessed a fortune which ought, by

rights, to be mine, but for the miserly old father. ‘Curse him for an

aristocrat!’ concluded I, in my wrath.

As I had been discoursing about Mary’s charms, Schneider listened with

much complacency and attention: when I spoke about her fortune, his

interest redoubled; and when I called her father an aristocrat, the

worthy ex-Jesuit gave a grin of satisfaction, which was really quite

terrible. Oh, fool that I was to trust him so far!

* * * * *

The very same evening an officer waited upon me with the following note

from St. Just:--

‘STRASBURG: _Fifth year of the Republic one and

‘indivisible, 11 Ventôse._

‘The citizen Pierre Ancel is to leave Strasburg within two hours, and to

carry the enclosed despatches to the President of the Committee of

Public Safety at Paris. The necessary leave of absence from his military

duties has been provided. Instant punishment will follow the slightest

delay on the road.

‘Salut et Fraternité.’

There was no choice but obedience, and off I sped on my weary way to the

capital.

As I was riding out of the Paris gate I met an equipage which I knew to

be that of Schneider. The ruffian smiled at me as I passed, and wished

me a _bon voyage_. Behind his chariot came a curious machine, or cart; a

great basket, three stout poles, and several planks, all painted red,

were lying in this vehicle, on the top of which was seated my friend

with the big cockade. It was the _portable guillotine_ which Schneider

always carried with him on his travels. The _bourreau_ was reading _The

Sorrows of Werther_, and looked as sentimental as usual.

I will not speak of my voyage, in order to relate to you Schneider’s. My

story had awakened the wretch’s curiosity and avarice, and he was

determined that such a prize as I had shown my cousin to be should fall

into no hands but his own. No sooner, in fact, had I quitted his room

than he procured the order for my absence, and was on the way to

Steinbach as I met him.

The journey is not a very long one; and on the next day my Uncle Jacob

was surprised by receiving a message that the Citizen Schneider was in

the village, and was coming to greet his old friend. Old Jacob was in an

ecstasy, for he longed to see his college acquaintance, and he hoped

also that Schneider had come into that part of the country upon the

marriage-business of your humble servant. Of course Mary was summoned to

give her best dinner, and wear her best frock; and her father made ready

to receive the new State dignitary.

Schneider’s carriage speedily rolled into the courtyard, and Schneider’s

_cart_ followed, as a matter of course. The ex-priest only entered the

house; his companion remaining with the horses to dine in private. Here

was a most touching meeting between him and Jacob. They talked over

their old college pranks and successes; they capped Greek verses, and

quoted ancient epigrams upon their tutors, who had been dead since the

Seven Years’ War. Mary declared it was quite touching to listen to the

merry friendly talk of these two old gentlemen.

After the conversation had continued for a time in this strain,

Schneider drew up all of a sudden, and said, quietly, that he had come

on particular and unpleasant business--hinting about troublesome times,

spies, evil reports, and so forth. Then he called Uncle Edward aside,

and had with him a long and earnest conversation; so Jacob went out and

talked with Schneider’s _friend_: they speedily became very intimate,

for the ruffian detailed all the circumstances of his interview with me.

When he returned into the house, some time after this pleasing colloquy,

he found the tone of the society strangely altered. Edward Ancel, pale

as a sheet, trembling, and crying for mercy; poor Mary weeping; and

Schneider pacing energetically about the apartment, raging about the

rights of man, the punishment of traitors, and the one and indivisible

Republic.

‘Jacob,’ he said as my uncle entered the room, ‘I was willing, for the

sake of our old friendship, to forget the crimes of your brother. He is

a known and dangerous aristocrat; he holds communications with the enemy

on the frontier; he is a possessor of great and ill-gotten wealth, of

which he has plundered the Republic. Do you know,’ said he, turning to

Edward Ancel, ‘where the least of these crimes, or the mere suspicion of

them, would lead you?’

Poor Edward sate trembling in his chair, and answered not a word. He

knew full well how quickly, in this dreadful time, punishment followed

suspicion; and though guiltless of all treason with the enemy, perhaps

he was aware that, in certain contracts with the Government, he had

taken to himself a more than patriotic share of profit.

‘Do you know,’ resumed Schneider, in a voice of thunder, ‘for what

purpose I came hither, and by whom I am accompanied? I am the

administrator of the justice of the Republic. The life of yourself and

your family is in my hands: yonder man, who follows me, is the executor

of the law; he has rid the nation of hundreds of wretches like yourself.

A single word from me, and your doom is sealed without hope, and your

last hour is come. Ho! Grégoire!’ shouted he; ‘is all ready?’

Grégoire replied from the court, ‘I can put up the machine in half an

hour. Shall I go down to the village and call the troops and the law

people?’

‘Do you hear him?’ said Schneider. ‘The guillotine is in your courtyard;

your name is on my list, and I have witnesses to prove your crime. Have

you a word in your defence?’

Not a word came; the old gentleman was dumb; but his daughter, who did

not give way to his terrors, spoke for him.

‘You cannot, sir,’ said she, ‘although you say it, _feel_ that my father

is guilty; you would not have entered our house thus alone if you had

thought it. You threaten him in this manner because you have something

to ask and to gain from us: what is it, citizen?--tell us at how much

you value our lives, and what sum we are to pay for our ransom?’

‘Sum!’ said Uncle Jacob; ‘he does not want money of us: my old friend,

my college chum, does not come hither to drive bargains with anybody

belonging to Jacob Ancel!’

‘Oh no, sir, no, you can’t want money of us,’ shrieked Edward; ‘we are

the poorest people of the village: ruined, Monsieur Schneider, ruined in

the cause of the Republic.’

‘Silence, father,’ said my brave Mary; ‘this man wants a _price_: he

comes with his worthy friend yonder, to frighten us, not to kill us. If

we die, he cannot touch a sou of our money; it is confiscated to the

State. Tell us, sir, what is the price of our safety?’

Schneider smiled, and bowed with perfect politeness.

‘Mademoiselle Marie,’ he said, ‘is perfectly correct in her surmise. I

do not want the life of this poor drivelling old man: my intentions are

much more peaceable, be assured. It rests entirely with this

accomplished young lady (whose spirit I like, and whose ready wit I

admire), whether the business between us shall be a matter of love or

death. I humbly offer myself, Citizen Ancel, as a candidate for the hand

of your charming daughter. Her goodness, her beauty, and the large

fortune which I know you intend to give her, would render her a

desirable match for the proudest man in the Republic, and, I am sure,

would make me the happiest.’

‘This must be a jest, Monsieur Schneider,’ said Mary, trembling, and

turning deadly pale: ‘you cannot mean this; you do not know me: you

never heard of me until to-day.’

‘Pardon me, belle dame,’ replied he; ‘your cousin Pierre has often

talked to me of your virtues; indeed, it was by his special suggestion

that I made the visit.’

‘It is false!--it is a base and cowardly lie!’ exclaimed she (for the

young lady’s courage was up),--‘Pierre never could have forgotten

himself and me so as to offer me to one like you. You come here with a

lie on your lips--a lie against my father, to swear his life away,

against my dear cousin’s honour and love. It is useless now to deny it:

Father, I love Pierre Ancel; I will marry no other but him--no, though

our last penny were paid to this man as the price of our freedom.’

Schneider’s only reply to this was a call to his friend Grégoire.

‘Send down to the village for the maire and some gendarmes; and tell

your people to make ready.’

‘Shall I put _the machine_ up?’ shouted he of the sentimental turn.

‘You hear him,’ said Schneider; ‘Marie Ancel, you may decide the fate of

your father. I shall return in a few hours,’ concluded he, ‘and will

then beg to know your decision.’

The advocate of the rights of man then left the apartment, and left the

family, as you may imagine, in no very pleasant mood.

Old Uncle Jacob, during the few minutes which had elapsed in the

enactment of this strange scene, sate staring wildly at Schneider, and

holding Mary on his knees: the poor little thing had fled to him for

protection, and not to her father, who was kneeling almost senseless at

the window, gazing at the executioner and his hideous preparations. The

instinct of the poor girl had not failed her; she knew that Jacob was

her only protector, if not of her life--Heaven bless him!--of her

honour. ‘Indeed,’ the old man said, in a stout voice, ‘this must never

be, my dearest child--you must not marry this man. If it be the will of

Providence that we fall, we shall have at least the thought to console

us that we die innocent. Any man in France at a time like this would be

a coward and traitor if he feared to meet the fate of the thousand brave

and good who have preceded us.’

‘Who speaks of dying?’ said Edward. ‘You, brother Jacob?--you would not

lay that poor girl’s head on the scaffold, or mine, your dear brother’s.

You will not let us die, Mary; you will not, for a small sacrifice,

bring your poor old father into danger?’

Mary made no answer. ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘there is time for escape: he

is to be here but in two hours; in two hours we may be safe, in

concealment, or on the frontier.’ And she rushed to the door of the

chamber, as if she would have instantly made the attempt: two gendarmes

were at the door. ‘We have orders, mademoiselle,’ they said, ‘to allow

no one to leave this apartment until the return of the Citizen

Schneider.’

Alas! all hope of escape was impossible. Mary became quite silent for a

while; she would not speak to Uncle Jacob; and in reply to her father’s

eager questions, she only replied, coldly, that she would answer

Schneider when he arrived.

The two dreadful hours passed away only too quickly; and, punctual to

his appointment, the ex-monk appeared. Directly he entered, Mary

advanced to him, and said calmly--

‘Sir, I could not deceive you if I said that I freely accepted the offer

which you have made me. I will be your wife; but I tell you that I love

another; and that it is only to save the lives of these two old men that

I yield my person up to you.’

Schneider bowed, and said--

‘It is bravely spoken. I like your candour--your beauty. As for the

love, excuse me for saying that is a matter of total indifference. I

have no doubt, however, that it will come as soon as your feelings in

favour of the young gentleman, your cousin, have lost their present

fervour. That engaging young man has, at present, another

mistress--Glory. He occupies, I believe, the distinguished post of

corporal in a regiment which is about to march to--Perpignan, I

believe.’

It was, in fact, Monsieur Schneider’s polite intention to banish me as

far as possible from the place of my birth; and he had, accordingly,

selected the Spanish frontier as the spot where I was to display my

future military talents.

Mary gave no answer to this sneer: she seemed perfectly resigned and

calm: she only said--

‘I must make, however, some conditions regarding our proposed marriage,

which a gentleman of Monsieur Schneider’s gallantry cannot refuse.’

‘Pray command me,’ replied the husband-elect. ‘Fair lady, you know I am

your slave.’

‘You occupy a distinguished political rank, citizen representative,’

said she; ‘and we in our village are likewise known and beloved. I

should be ashamed, I confess, to wed you here; for our people would

wonder at the sudden marriage, and imply that it was only by compulsion

that I gave you my hand. Let us, then, perform this ceremony at

Strasburg, before the public authorities of the city, with the state and

solemnity which befits the marriage of one of the chief men of the

Republic.’

‘Be it so, madam,’ he answered, and gallantly proceeded to embrace his

bride.

Mary did not shrink from this ruffian’s kiss; nor did she reply when

poor old Jacob, who sat sobbing in a corner, burst out, and said--‘Oh,

Mary, Mary, I did not think this of thee!’

‘Silence, brother!’ hastily said Edward; ‘my good son-in-law will pardon

your ill-humour.’

I believe Uncle Edward in his heart was pleased at the notion of the

marriage; he only cared for money and rank, and was little scrupulous as

to the means of obtaining them.

The matter then was finally arranged; and presently, after Schneider had

transacted the affairs which brought him into that part of the country,

the happy bridal party set forward for Strasburg. Uncles Jacob and

Edward occupied the back seat of the old family carriage, and the young

bride and bridegroom (he was nearly Jacob’s age) were seated

majestically in front. Mary has often since talked to me of this

dreadful journey. She said she wondered at the scrupulous politeness of

Schneider during the route; nay, that at another period she could have

listened to and admired the singular talent of this man, his great

learning, his fancy, and wit; but her mind was bent upon other things,

and the poor girl firmly thought that her last day was come.

In the meantime, by a blessed chance, I had not ridden three leagues

from Strasburg, when the officer of a passing troop of a cavalry

regiment, looking at the beast on which I was mounted, was pleased to

take a fancy to it, and ordered me, in an authoritative tone, to

descend, and to give up my steed for the benefit of the Republic. I

represented to him, in vain, that I was a soldier like himself, and the

bearer of despatches to Paris. ‘Fool!’ he said; ‘do you think they would

send despatches by a man who can ride at best but ten leagues a day?’

And the honest soldier was so wroth at my supposed duplicity, that he

not only confiscated my horse, but my saddle, and the little portmanteau

which contained the chief part of my worldly goods and treasure. I had

nothing for it but to dismount, and take my way on foot back again to

Strasburg. I arrived there in the evening, determining the next morning

to make my case known to the Citizen St. Just; and though I made my

entry without a sou, I don’t know what secret exultation I felt at again

being able to return.

The antechamber of such a great man as St. Just was, in those days, too

crowded for an unprotected boy to obtain an early audience; two days

passed before I could obtain a sight of the friend of Robespierre. On

the third day, as I was still waiting for the interview, I heard a great

bustle in the courtyard of the house, and looked out with many others at

the spectacle.

A number of men and women, singing epithalamiums, and dressed in some

absurd imitation of Roman costume, a troop of soldiers and gendarmerie,

and an immense crowd of the _badauds_ of Strasburg, were surrounding a

carriage which then entered the court of the mayoralty. In this

carriage, great God! I saw my dear Mary, and Schneider by her side. The

truth instantly came upon me; the reason for Schneider’s keen inquiries

and my abrupt dismissal; but I could not believe that Mary was false to

me. I had only to look in her face, white and rigid as marble, to see

that this proposed marriage was not with her consent.

I fell back in the crowd as the procession entered the great room in

which I was, and hid my face in my hands; I could not look upon her as

the wife of another,--upon her so long loved and truly--the saint of my

childhood--the pride and hope of my youth--torn from me for ever, and

delivered over to the unholy arms of the murderer who stood before me.

The door of St. Just’s private apartment opened, and he took his seat at

the table of mayoralty just as Schneider and his cortége arrived before

it.

Schneider then said that he came in before the authorities of the

Republic to espouse the Citoyenne Marie Ancel.

‘Is she a minor?’ said St. Just.

‘She is a minor, but her father is here to give her away.’

‘I am here,’ said Uncle Edward, coming eagerly forward and bowing.

‘Edward Ancel, so please you, citizen representative. The worthy Citizen

Schneider has done me the honour of marrying into my family.’

‘But my father has not told you the terms of the marriage,’ said Mary,

interrupting him, in a loud, clear voice.

Here Schneider seized her hand, and endeavoured to prevent her from

speaking. Her father turned pale, and cried, ‘Stop, Mary, stop! For

Heaven’s sake, remember your poor old father’s danger!’

‘Sir, may I speak?’

‘Let the young woman speak,’ said St. Just, ‘if she have a desire to

talk.’ He did not suspect what would be the purport of her story.

‘Sir,’ she said, ‘two days since the Citizen Schneider entered for the

first time our house; and you will fancy that it must be a love of very

sudden growth which has brought either him or me before you to-day. He

had heard from a person who is now, unhappily, not present, of my name

and of the wealth which my family was said to possess; and hence arose

this mad design concerning me. He came into our village with supreme

power, an executioner at his heels, and the soldiery and authorities of

the district entirely under his orders. He threatened my father with

death if he refused to give up his daughter; and I, who knew that there

was no chance of escape, except here before you, consented to become his

wife. My father I know to be innocent, for all his transactions with the

State have passed through my hands. Citizen representative, I demand to

be freed from this marriage; and I charge Schneider as a traitor to the

Republic, as a man who would have murdered an innocent citizen for the

sake of private gain.’

During the delivery of this little speech, Uncle Jacob had been sobbing

and panting like a broken-winded horse; and when Mary had done, he

rushed up to her and kissed her, and held her tight in his arms. ‘Bless

thee, my child!’ he cried, ‘for having had the courage to speak the

truth, and shame thy old father and me, who dared not say a word.’

‘The girl amazes me,’ said Schneider, with a look of astonishment. ‘I

never saw her, it is true, till yesterday; but I used no force: her

father gave her to me with his free consent, and she yielded as gladly.

Speak, Edward Ancel, was it not so?’

‘It was, indeed, by my free consent,’ said Edward, trembling.

‘For shame, brother!’ cried old Jacob. ‘Sir, it was by Edward’s free

consent and my niece’s; but the guillotine was in the courtyard!

Question Schneider’s famulus, the man Grégoire, him who reads _The

Sorrows of Werther_.’

Grégoire stepped forward, and looked hesitatingly at Schneider as he

said, ‘I know not what took place within doors; but I was ordered to put

up the scaffold without; and I was told to get soldiers, and let no one

leave the house.’

‘Citizen St. Just,’ cried Schneider, ‘you will not allow the testimony

of a ruffian like this, of a foolish girl, and a mad ex-priest, to weigh

against the word of one who has done such service to the Republic: it is

a base conspiracy to betray me; the whole family is known to favour the

interest of the _émigrés_.’

‘And therefore you would marry a member of the family, and allow the

others to escape: you must make a better defence, Citizen Schneider,’

said St. Just, sternly.

Here I came forward, and said that, three days since, I had received an

order to quit Strasburg for Paris, immediately after a conversation with

Schneider, in which I had asked him his aid in promoting my marriage

with my cousin, Mary Ancel; that he had heard from me full accounts

regarding her father’s wealth; and that he had abruptly caused my

dismissal, in order to carry on his scheme against her.

‘You are in the uniform of a regiment in this town; who sent you from

it?’ said St. Just.

I produced the order, signed by himself, and the despatches which

Schneider had sent me.

‘The signature is mine, but the despatches did not come from my office.

Can you prove in any way your conversation with Schneider?’

‘Why,’ said my sentimental friend Grégoire, ‘for the matter of that, I

can answer that the lad was always talking about this young woman: he

told me the whole story himself, and many a good laugh I had with

Citizen Schneider as we talked about it.’

‘The charge against Edward Ancel must be examined into,’ said St. Just.

‘The marriage cannot take place. But if I had ratified it, Mary Ancel,

what would then have been your course?’

Mary felt for a moment in her bosom, and said--‘_He would have died

to-night--I would have stabbed him with this dagger_.’[3]

* * * * *

The rain was beating down the streets, and yet they were thronged; all

the world was hastening to the market-place, where the worthy Grégoire

was about to perform some of the pleasant duties of his office. On this

occasion it was not death that he was to inflict; he was only to expose

a criminal who was to be sent on afterwards to Paris. St. Just had

ordered that Schneider should stand for six hours in the public _place_

of Strasburg, and then be sent on to the capital, to be dealt with as

the authorities there might think fit.

The people followed with execrations the villain to his place of

punishment; and Grégoire grinned as he fixed up to the post the man

whose orders he had obeyed so often--who had delivered over to disgrace

and punishment so many who merited it not.

Schneider was left for several hours exposed to the mockery and insults

of the mob; he was then, according to his sentence, marched on to Paris,

where it is probable that he would have escaped death, but for his own

fault. He was left for some time in prison, quite unnoticed, perhaps

forgotten: day by day fresh victims were carried to the scaffold, and

yet the Alsatian tribune remained alive; at last, by the mediation of

one of his friends, a long petition was presented to Robespierre,

stating his services and his innocence, and demanding his freedom. The

reply to this was an order for his instant execution: the wretch died in

the last days of Robespierre’s reign. His comrade, St. Just, followed

him, as you know; but Edward Ancel had been released before this, for

the action of my brave Mary had created a strong feeling in his favour.

‘And Mary?’ said I.

Here a stout and smiling old lady entered the Captain’s little room: she

was leaning on the arm of a military-looking man of some forty years,

and followed by a number of noisy rosy children.

‘This is Mary Ancel,’ said the Captain, ‘and I am Captain Pierre, and

yonder is the Colonel, my son; and you see us here assembled in force,

for it is the fête of little Jacob yonder, whose brothers and sisters

have all come from their schools to dance at his birthday.’

BEATRICE MERGER

Beatrice Merger, whose name might figure at the head of one of Mr.

Colburn’s politest romances--so smooth and aristocratic does it

sound--is no heroine, except of her own simple history; she is not a

fashionable French Countess, nor even a victim of the Revolution.

[Illustration]

She is a stout, sturdy girl of two-and-twenty, with a face beaming with

good-nature, and marked dreadfully by small-pox; and a pair of black

eyes, which might have done some execution had they been placed in a

smoother face. Beatrice’s station in society is not very exalted; she is

a servant-of-all-work: she will dress your wife, your dinner, your

children; she does beefsteaks and plain work; she makes beds, blacks

boots, and waits at table;--such, at least, were the offices which she

performed in the fashionable establishment of the writer of this book;

perhaps her history may not inaptly occupy a few pages of it.

‘My father died,’ said Beatrice, ‘about six years since, and left my

poor mother with little else but a small cottage and a strip of land,

and four children too young to work. It was hard enough in my father’s

time to supply so many little mouths with food; and how was a poor

widowed woman to provide for them now, who had neither the strength nor

the opportunity for labour?

‘Besides us, to be sure, there was my old aunt; and she would have

helped us, but she could not, for the old woman is bedridden; so she did

nothing but occupy our best room, and grumble from morning till night:

Heaven knows! poor old soul, that she had no great reason to be very

happy; for you know, sir, that it frets the temper to be sick; and that

it is worse still to be sick and hungry too.

‘At that time, in the country where we lived (in Picardy, not very far

from Boulogne), times were so bad that the best workman could hardly

find employ; and when he did, he was happy if he could earn a matter of

twelve sous a day. Mother, work as she would, could not gain more than

six; and it was a hard job, out of this, to put meat into six bellies,

and clothing on six backs. Old Aunt Bridget would scold, as she got her

portion of black bread; and my little brothers used to cry if theirs did

not come in time. I, too, used to cry when I got my share; for mother

kept only a little, little piece for herself, and said that she had

dined in the fields,--God pardon her for the lie! and bless her, as I am

sure He did; for, but for Him, no working man or woman could subsist

upon such a wretched morsel as my dear mother took.

‘I was a thin, ragged, barefooted girl, then, and sickly and weak for

want of food; but I think I felt mother’s hunger more than my own; and

many and many a bitter night I lay awake, crying, and praying to God to

give me means of working for myself and aiding her. And He has, indeed,

been good to me,’ said pious Beatrice, ‘for He has given me all this!

‘Well, time rolled on, and matters grew worse than ever: winter came,

and was colder to us than any other winter, for our clothes were thinner

and more torn; mother sometimes could find no work, for the fields in

which she laboured were hidden under the snow; so that when we wanted

them most we had them least--warmth, work, or food.

‘I knew that, do what I would, mother would never let me leave her,

because I looked to my little brothers and my old cripple of an aunt;

but, still, bread was better for us than all my service; and when I left

them the six would have a slice more; so I determined to bid good-bye to

nobody, but to go away, and look for work elsewhere. One Sunday, when

mother and the little ones were at church, I went in to Aunt Bridget,

and said, “Tell mother when she comes back, that Beatrice is gone.” I

spoke quite stoutly, as if I did not care about it.

‘“Gone! gone where?” said she. “You an’t going to leave me alone, you

nasty thing; you an’t going to the village to dance, you ragged,

barefooted slut: you’re all of a piece in this house--your mother, your

brothers, and you. I know you’ve got meat in the kitchen, and you only

give me black bread;” and here the old lady began to scream as if her

heart would break; but we did not mind it, we were so used to it.

‘“Aunt,” said I, “I’m going, and took this very opportunity because you

_were_ alone; tell mother I am too old now to eat her bread and do no

work for it: I am going, please God, where work and bread can be found:”

and so I kissed her: she was so astonished that she could not move or

speak; and I walked away through the old room, and the little garden,

God knows whither!

‘I heard the old woman screaming after me, but I did not stop nor turn

round. I don’t think I could, for my heart was very full; and if I had

gone back again, I should never have had the courage to go away. So I

walked a long, long way, until night fell; and I thought of poor mother

coming home from mass, and not finding me; and little Pierre shouting

out, in his clear voice, for Beatrice to bring him his supper. I think I

should like to have died that night, and I thought I should too; for

when I was obliged to throw myself on the cold, hard ground, my feet

were too torn and weary to bear me any farther.

‘Just then the moon got up; and do you know I felt a comfort in looking

at it, for I knew it was shining on our little cottage, and it seemed

like an old friend’s face. A little way on, as I saw by the moon, was a

village; and I saw, too, that a man was coming towards me; he must have

heard me crying, I suppose.

‘Was not God good to me? This man was a farmer, who had need of a girl

in his house; he made me tell him why I was alone, and I told him the

same story I have told you, and he believed me and took me home. I had

walked six long leagues from our village that day, asking everywhere for

work in vain; and here, at bedtime, I found a bed and a supper!

‘Here I lived very well for some months; my master was very good and

kind to me; but, unluckily, too poor to give me any wages; so that I

could save nothing to send to my poor mother. My mistress used to scold;

but I was used to that at home, from Aunt Bridget; and she beat me

sometimes, but I did not mind it; for your hardy country girl is not

like your tender town lasses, who cry if a pin pricks them, and give

warning to their mistresses at the first hard word. The only drawback to

my comfort was, that I had no news of my mother; I could not write to

her, nor could she have read my letter, if I had; so there I was, at

only six leagues’ distance from home, as far off as if I had been to

Paris or to ‘Merica.

‘However, in a few months I grew so listless and homesick, that my

mistress said she would keep me no longer; and though I went away as

poor as I came, I was still too glad to get back to the old village

again, and see dear mother, if it were but for a day. I knew she would

share her crust with me, as she had done for so long a time before; and

hoped that, now, as I was taller and stronger, I might find work more

easily in the neighbourhood.

‘You may fancy what a fête it was when I came back; though I’m sure we

cried as much as if it had been a funeral. Mother got into a fit, which

frightened us all; and as for Aunt Bridget, she _skreeled_ away for

hours together, and did not scold for two days at least. Little Pierre

offered me the whole of his supper; poor little man! his slice of bread

was no bigger than before I went away.

‘Well, I got a little work here, and a little there; but still I was a

burden at home rather than a breadwinner; and, at the closing in of the

winter, was very glad to hear of a place at two leagues’ distance, where

work, they said, was to be had. Off I set, one morning, to find it, but

missed my way, somehow, until it was night-time before I

arrived.--Night-time and snow again; it seemed as if all my journeys

were to be made in this bitter weather.

‘When I came to the farmers door, his house was shut up, and his people

all a-bed; I knocked for a long while in vain; at last he made his

appearance at a window upstairs, and seemed so frightened, and looked so

angry, that I suppose he took me for a thief. I told him how I had come

for work. “Who comes for work at such an hour?” said he. “Go home, you

impudent baggage, and do not disturb honest people out of their sleep.”

He banged the window to; and so I was left alone to shift for myself as

I might. There was no shed, no cowhouse, where I could find a bed; so I

got under a cart, on some straw; it was no very warm berth. I could not

sleep for the cold; and the hours passed so slowly, that it seemed as if

I had been there a week, instead of a night; but still it was not so bad

as the first night when I left home, and when the good farmer found me.

‘In the morning, before it was light, the farmer’s people came out, and

saw me crouching under the cart: they told me to get up; but I was so

cold that I could not: at last the man himself came, and recognised me

as the girl who had disturbed him the night before. When he heard my

name and the purpose for which I came, this good man took me into the

house, and put me into one of the beds out of which his sons had just

got; and if I was cold before, you may be sure I was warm and

comfortable now: such a bed as this I had never slept in, nor ever did I

have such good milk-soup as he gave me out of his own breakfast. Well,

he agreed to hire me; and what do you think he gave me?--six sous a day!

and let me sleep in the cowhouse besides: you may fancy how happy I was

now, at the prospect of earning so much money.

‘There was an old woman among the labourers who used to sell us soup: I

got a cupful every day for a halfpenny, with a bit of bread in it; and

might eat as much beetroot besides as I liked: not a very wholesome

meal, to be sure, but God took care that it should not disagree with me.

‘So, every Saturday, when work was over, I had thirty sous to carry home

to mother; and tired though I was, I walked merrily the two leagues to

our village, to see her again. On the road there was a great wood to

pass through, and this frightened me; for if a thief should come and rob

me of my whole week’s earnings, what could a poor lone girl do to help

herself? But I found a remedy for this too, and no thieves ever came

near me; I used to begin saying my prayers as I entered the forest, and

never stopped until I was safe at home; and safe I always arrived, with

my thirty sous in my pocket.--Ah! you may be sure, Sunday was a merry

day for us all.’

* * * * *

This is the whole of Beatrice’s history which is worthy of publication;

the rest of it only relates to her arrival in Paris, and the various

masters and mistresses whom she there had the honour to serve. As soon

as she enters the capital the romance disappears, and the poor girl’s

sufferings and privations luckily vanish with it. Beatrice has got now

warm gowns, and stout shoes, and plenty of good food. She has had her

little brother from Picardy; clothed, fed, and educated him: that young

gentleman is now a carpenter, and an honour to his profession. Madame

Merger is in easy circumstances, and receives, yearly, fifty francs from

her daughter. To crown all, Mademoiselle Beatrice herself is a funded

proprietor, and consulted the writer of this biography as to the best

method of laying out a capital of two hundred francs, which is the

present amount of her fortune.

God bless her! she is richer than his Grace the Duke of Devonshire; and,

I dare to say, has, in her humble walk, been more virtuous and more

happy than all the dukes in the realm.

It is, indeed, for the benefit of dukes and such great people (who, I

make no doubt, have long since ordered copies of these Sketches from Mr.

Macrone) that poor little Beatrice’s story has been indited. Certain it

is that the young woman would never have been immortalised in this way,

but for the good which her betters may derive from her example. If your

ladyship will but reflect a little, after boasting of the sums which

you spend in charity; the beef and blankets which you dole out at

Christmas; the poonah-painting which you execute for fancy fairs; the

long, long sermons which you listen to at St. George’s, the whole year

through;--your ladyship, I say, will allow that, although perfectly

meritorious in your line, as a patroness of the Church of England, of

Almack’s, and of the Lying-in Asylum, yours is but a paltry sphere of

virtue, a pitiful attempt at benevolence, and that this honest

servant-girl puts you to shame! And you, my Lord Bishop; do you, out of

your six sous a day, give away five to support your flock and family?

Would you drop a single coach-horse (I do not say _a dinner_, for such a

notion is monstrous in one of your lordship’s degree) to feed any one of

the starving children of your lordship’s mother--the Church?

I pause for a reply. His lordship took too much turtle and cold punch

for dinner yesterday, and cannot speak just now; but we have, by this

ingenious question, silenced him altogether: let the world wag as it

will, and poor Christians and curates starve as they may, my lord’s

footmen must have their new liveries, and his horses their four feeds a

day.

* * * * *

When we recollect his speech about the Catholics--when we remember his

last charity sermon,--but I say nothing. Here is a poor benighted

superstitious creature, worshipping images, without a rag to her tail,

who has as much faith, and humility, and charity, as all the reverend

bench.

* * * * *

This angel is without a place; and for this reason (besides the pleasure

of composing the above slap at Episcopacy)--I have indited her history.

If the Bishop is going to Paris, and wants a good honest

maid-of-all-work, he can have her, I have no doubt; or if he chooses to

give a few pounds to her mother, they can be sent to Mr. Titmarsh, at

the publisher’s.

Here is Miss Merger’s last letter and autograph. The note was evidently

composed by an _écrivain public_:--

‘_Madame_--_Ayant appris par ce Monsieur, que vous vous portiez

bien, ainsi que Monsieur, ayant su aussi que vous parliez de moi

dans votre lettre cette nouvelle m’a fait bien plaisir. Je profite

de l’occasion pour vous faire passer ce petit billet où Je voudrais

pouvoir m’enveloper pour aller vous voir el pour vous dire que Je

suis encore sans place Je m’ennuye toujours de ne pas vous voir

ainsi que Minette [Minette_ is a cat] _qui semble m’interroger tour

à tour et demander où votes êtes. Je vous envoye aussi la note du

linge à blanchir_--_ah, Madame! Je vais cesser de vous écrire mais

non de vous regretter_.’

[Illustration: Beatrice Mergen signature]

CARICATURES AND LITHOGRAPHY IN PARIS

Fifty years ago there lived at Munich a poor fellow, by name Aloys

Senefelder, who was in so little repute as an author and artist, that

printers and engravers refused to publish his works at their own

charges, and so set him upon some plan for doing without their aid. In

the first place, Aloys invented a certain kind of ink, which would

resist the action of the acid that is usually employed by engravers, and

with this he made his experiments upon copper plates, as long as he

could afford to purchase them. He found that to write upon the plates

backwards, after the manner of engravers, required much skill and many

trials; and he thought that, were he to practise upon any other polished

surface--a smooth stone, for instance, the least costly article

imaginable--he might spare the expense of the copper until he had

sufficient skill to use it.

One day, it is said that Aloys was called upon to write--rather a humble

composition for an author and artist--a washing-bill. He had no paper at

hand, and so he wrote out the bill with some of his newly invented ink

upon one of his Kilheim stones. Some time afterwards he thought he would

try and take an _impression_ of his washing-bill: he did, and succeeded.

Such is the story, which the reader most likely knows very well; and

having alluded to the origin of the art, we shall not follow the stream

through its windings and enlargement after it issued from the little

parent rock, or fill our pages with the rest of the pedigree. Senefelder

invented Lithography. His invention has not made so much noise and larum

in the world as some others, which have an origin quite as humble and

unromantic; but it is one to which we owe no small profit and a great

deal of pleasure; and, as such, we are bound to speak of it with all

gratitude and respect. The schoolmaster, who is now abroad, has taught

us, in our youth, how the cultivation of art ‘emollit mores nec sinit

esse’--(it is needless to finish the quotation); and lithography has

been, to our thinking, the very best ally that art ever had; the best

friend of the artist, allowing him to produce rapidly multiplied and

authentic copies of his own works (without trusting to the tedious and

expensive assistance of the engraver); and the best friend to the people

likewise, who have means of purchasing these cheap and beautiful

productions, and thus having their ideas ‘mollified’ and their manners

‘feros’ no more.

With ourselves among whom money is plenty, enterprise so great, and

everything matter of commercial speculation, lithography has not been so

much practised as wood or steel engraving, which, by the aid of great

original capital and spread of sale, are able more than to compete with

the art of drawing on stone. The two former may be called art done by

_machinery_. We confess to a prejudice in favour of the honest work of

_hand_, in matters of art, and prefer the rough workmanship of the

painter to the smooth copies of his performances which are produced, for

the most part, on the wood block or the steel plate.

The theory will possibly be objected to by many of our readers: the best

proof in its favour, we think, is, that the state of art amongst the

people in France and Germany, where publishers are not so wealthy or

enterprising as with us,[4] and where lithography is more practised, is

infinitely higher than in England, and the appreciation more correct. As

draughtsmen, the French and German painters are incomparably superior to

our own; and with art, as with any other commodity, the demand will be

found pretty equal to the supply: with us, the general demand is for

neatness, prettiness, and what is called _effect_ in pictures, and these

can be rendered completely, nay, improved, by the engraver’s

conventional manner of copying the artist’s performances. But to copy

fine expression and fine drawing, the engraver himself must be a fine

artist; and let anybody examine the host of picture-books which appear

every Christmas, and say whether, for the most part, painters or

engravers possess any artistic merit? We boast, nevertheless, of some of

the best engravers and painters in Europe. Here, again, the supply is

accounted for by the demand; our highest class is richer than other

aristocracy, quite as well instructed, and can judge and pay for fine

pictures and engravings. But these costly productions are for the few,

and not for the many, who have not yet certainly arrived at properly

appreciating fine art.

Take the standard ‘Album,’ for instance--that unfortunate collection of

deformed Zuleikas and Medoras (from the ‘Byron Beauties,’ the Flowers,

Gems, Souvenirs, Caskets of Loveliness, Beauty, as they may be called);

glaring caricatures of flowers, singly, in groups, in flower-pots, or

with hideous deformed little Cupids sporting among them; of what are

called ‘mezzotinto’ pencil-drawings, ‘poonah-paintings,’ and what not.

‘The Album’ is to be found invariably upon the round rosewood

brass-inlaid drawing-room table of the middle classes, and with a couple

of ‘Annuals’ besides, which flank it on the same table, represents the

art of the house; perhaps there is a portrait of the master of the house

in the dining-room, grim-glancing from above the mantelpiece; and of the

mistress over the piano upstairs; add to these some odious miniatures of

the sons and daughters, on each side of the chimney-glass; and here,

commonly (we appeal to the reader if this is an overcharged picture),

the collection ends. The family goes to the Exhibition once a year, to

the National Gallery once in ten years: to the former place they have an

inducement to go; there are their own portraits, or the portraits of

their friends, or the portraits of public characters; and you will see

them infallibly wondering over No. 2645 in the catalogue, representing

‘The Portrait of a Lady,’ or of the ‘First Mayor of Little Pedlington

since the Passing of the Reform Bill;’ or else bustling and squeezing

among the miniatures, where lies the chief attraction of the Gallery.

England has produced, owing to the effects of this class of admirers of

art, two admirable, and five hundred very clever portrait-painters. How

many _artists_? Let the reader count upon his five fingers, and see if,

living at the present moment, he can name one for each.

If, from this examination of our own worthy middle classes, we look to

the same class in France, what a difference do we find! Humble _cafés_

in country towns have their walls covered with pleasing picture papers,

representing, ‘Les Gloires de l’Armée Française,’ the ‘Seasons,’ the

‘Four Quarters of the World,’ ‘Cupid and Psyche,’ or some other

allegory, landscape, or history, rudely painted, as papers for walls

usually are; but the figures are all tolerably well drawn; and the

common taste, which has caused a demand for such things, undeniable. In

Paris, the manner in which the _cafés_ and houses of the _restaurateurs_

are ornamented, is, of course, a thousand times richer, and nothing can

be more beautiful, or more exquisitely finished and correct, than the

designs which adorn many of them. We are not prepared to say what sums

were expended upon the painting of ‘Véry’s’ or ‘Verfour’s,’ of the

‘Salle Musard,’ or of numberless other places of public resort in the

capital. There is many a shopkeeper whose sign is a very tolerable

picture; and often have we stopped to admire (the reader will give us

credit for having remained _outside_) the excellent workmanship of the

grapes and vine-leaves over the door of some very humble, dirty,

inodorous shop of a _marchand de vin_.

These, however, serve only to educate the public taste, and are

ornaments, for the most part, much too costly for the people. But the

same love of ornament which is shown in their public places of resort,

appears in their houses likewise; and every one of our readers who has

lived in Paris, in any lodging, magnificent or humble, with any family,

however poor, may bear witness how profusely the walls of his smart

_salon_ in the English quarter, or of his little room _au sixième_ in

the Pays Latin, has been decorated with prints of all kinds. In the

first, probably, with bad engravings on copper from the bad and tawdry

pictures of the artists of the time of the Empire; in the latter, with

gay caricatures of Granville or Monnier; military pieces, such as are

dashed off by Raffet, Charlet, Vernet (one can hardly say which of the

three designers has the greatest merit, or the most vigorous hand); or

clever pictures from the crayon of the Deverias, the admirable

Roqueplan, or Decamp. We have named here, we believe, the principal

lithographic artists in Paris; and those--as doubtless there are

many--of our readers who have looked over Monsieur Aubert’s portfolios,

or gazed at that famous caricature-shop window in the Rue du Coq, or are

even acquainted with the exterior of Monsieur Delaporte’s little

emporium in the Burlington Arcade, need not be told how excellent the

productions of all these artists are in their _genre_. We get in these

engravings the _loisirs_ of men of genius, not the finikin performances

of laboured mediocrity, as with us: all these artists are good painters,

as well as good designers; a design from them is worth a whole gross of

‘Books of Beauty;’ and if we might raise a humble supplication to the

artists in our own country of similar merit--to such men as Leslie,

Maclise, Herbert, Cattermole, and others--it would be, that they should,

after the example of their French brethren and of the English landscape

painters, take chalk in hand, produce their own copies of their own

sketches, and never more draw a single ‘Forsaken One,’ ‘Rejected One,’

‘Dejected One,’ at the entreaty of any publisher, or for the pages of

any Book of Beauty, Royalty, or Loveliness whatever.

Can there he a more pleasing walk in the whole world than a stroll

through the Gallery of the Louvre on a fête-day? not to look so much at

the pictures as at the lookers-on. Thousands of the poorer classes are

there: mechanics in their Sunday clothes, smiling grisettes, smart

dapper soldiers of the line, with bronzed wondering faces, marching

together in little companies of six or seven, and stopping every now and

then at Napoleon or Leonidas as they appear in proper vulgar heroics in

the pictures of David or Gros. The taste of these people will hardly be

approved by the connoisseur, but they have _a_ taste for art. Can the

same be said of our lower classes, who, if they are inclined to be

sociable and amused in their holidays, have no place of resort but the

taproom or tea-garden, and no food for conversation except such as can

be built upon the politics or the police reports of the last Sunday

paper? So much has Church and State puritanism done for us--so well has

it succeeded in materialising and binding down to the earth the

imagination of men, for which God has made another world (which certain

statesmen take but too little into account)--that fair and beautiful

world of art, in which there _can_ be nothing selfish or sordid, of

which Dulness has forgotten the existence, and which Bigotry has

endeavoured to shut out from sight--

‘On a banni les démons et les fées,

Le raisonner tristement s’accrédite:

On court, hélas! après la vérité:

Ah! croyez-moi, l’erreur a son mérite!’

We are not putting in a plea here for demons and fairies, as Voltaire

does in the above exquisite lines; nor about to expatiate on the

beauties of error, for it has none; but the clank of steam-engines, and

the shouts of politicians, and the struggle for gain or bread, and the

loud denunciations of stupid bigots, have well-nigh smothered poor Fancy

among us. We boast of our science, and vaunt our superior morality. Does

the latter exist? In spite of all the forms which our policy has

invented to secure it--in spite of all the preachers, all the

meeting-houses, and all the legislative enactments--if any person will

take upon himself the painful labour of purchasing and perusing some of

the cheap periodical prints which form the people’s library of

amusement, and contain what may be presumed to be their standard in

matters of imagination and fancy, he will see how false the claim is

that we bring forward of superior morality. The aristocracy, who are so

eager to maintain, were, of course, not the last to feel, the annoyance

of the legislative restrictions on the Sabbath, and eagerly seized upon

that happy invention for dissipating the gloom and _ennui_ ordered by

Act of Parliament to prevail on that day--the Sunday paper. It might be

read in a club-room, where the poor could not see how their betters

ordained one thing for the vulgar, and another for themselves; or in an

easy-chair, in the study, whither my lord retires every Sunday for his

devotions. It dealt in private scandal and ribaldry, only the more

piquant for its pretty flimsy veil of _double entendre_. It was a

fortune to the publisher, and it became a necessary to the reader, which

he could not do without, any more than without his snuff-box, his

opera-box, or his _chasse_ after coffee. The delightful novelty could

not for any time be kept exclusively for the _haut ton_; and from my

lord it descended to his valet or tradesmen, and from Grosvenor Square

it spread all the town through; so that now the lower classes have their

scandal and ribaldry organs, as well as their betters (the rogues, they

_will_ imitate them!); and as their tastes are somewhat coarser than my

lord’s, and their numbers a thousand to one, why of course the prints

have increased, and the profligacy has been diffused in a ratio exactly

proportionable to the demand, until the town is infested with such a

number of monstrous publications of the kind as would have put Abbé

Dubois to the blush, or made Louis XV. cry shame. Talk of English

morality!--the worst licentiousness, in the worst period of the French

monarchy, scarcely equalled the wickedness of this Sabbath-keeping

country of ours.

The reader will be glad, at last, to come to the conclusion that we

would fain draw from all these descriptions--why does this immorality

exist? Because the people _must_ be amused, and have not been taught

_how_; because the upper classes, frightened by stupid cant, or absorbed

in material want, have not as yet learned the refinement which only the

cultivation of art can give; and when their intellects are uneducated,

and their tastes are coarse, the tastes and amusements of classes still

more ignorant must be coarse and vicious likewise, in an increased

proportion.