CHAPTER I.

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BLACKWOOD’S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCLXXI. SEPTEMBER, 1846. VOL. LX.

CONTENTS.

MEXICO, ITS TERRITORY AND PEOPLE, 261

A SUMMER DAY. BY THOMAS AIRD, 277

CABRERA, 293

MY COLLEGE FRIENDS. NO. IV. CHARLES RUSSELL, THE GENTLEMAN

COMMONER. CONCLUSION, 309

LETTERS ON ENGLISH HEXAMETERS. LETTER II., 327

ALGERIA, 334

HOW TO BUILD A HOUSE AND LIVE IN IT. NO. II., 349

HOW I BECAME A YEOMAN, 358

THE WATER-CURE, 376

EDINBURGH:

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;

AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.

_To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._

SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.

SABLONIERE HOTEL, LEICESTER SQUARE,

_London, July 27th, 1846_.

Messrs BLACKWOOD AND SONS,

GENTLEMEN,--Scarcely arrived in London, on my annual visit to this

capital, a fiend put into my hands a copy of Blackwood’s Edinburgh

Magazine for June 1846, in which I observe an article entitled

“_Rogues in Outline_.” The writer of this article, in a section headed

“_Birbone--Baseggio_,” has taken most unwarrantable liberties with my

character, mixing them up with some false details respecting my private

life. The latter impertinences I treat with contempt: not so the titles

applied to me of “_Old Rogue B----_” and “_Birbone Baseggio_,” with

the insinuation that I make a practice of selling modern objects for

antiques.

If your correspondent had taken the trouble to inquire of any of his

_well-informed_ countrymen at Rome or in England, he certainly never

would have committed you, or himself, by the publication of the calumny

he so wantonly seeks to inflict on my character. Luckily for me, there

are now here many respectable persons of rank and reputation who will

take a pleasure in attesting, _if necessary_, the habitual fairness

and straight-forwardness of my dealings. I expect equal fairness from

you, and that you will lose no time in affording me the reparation of a

wrong you have (I trust unconsciously) done me, by at least publishing

this letter in your next Number, giving me in the mean time an

assurance to that effect. I await your answer, and remain your obedient

servant,

JOSEPH BASEGGIO.

BLACKWOOD’S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCLXXI. SEPTEMBER, 1846. VOL. LX.

MEXICO, ITS TERRITORY AND PEOPLE.

Man must be content to follow the steps of Providence tardily,

timidly, and uncertainly; but he can have no pursuit more worthy of

his genius, his wisdom, or his virtue. Why one half of the globe

remained hidden from the other during the four or five thousand years

after its creation, is among the questions which we may long ask

without obtaining an answer. Why the treasures, the plants, and the

animals of America should have been utterly unknown, alike to the

adventurous expeditions of Tyre and Sidon, to the nautical skill of

the Carthaginian, to the brilliant curiosity of the Greek, and to the

imperial ambition of the Roman; while their discovery was reserved

for a Genoese sailor in the fifteenth century, is a problem perhaps

inaccessible of solution by any human insight into the ways of the

Great Disposer of all things. Yet may it not be conjectured that the

knowledge was expressly withheld until it could be of practical use to

mankind; that if America had been discovered a thousand years before,

it would have been found only a vast wilderness in both its southern

and northern divisions, for it was then almost wholly unpeopled; that

with the chief interest of imperial Rome turned to European possession

or Eastern conquest, the discovery would have been nearly thrown away;

that there was hitherto no superflux of European population to pour

into this magnificent desert; and that even if Roman adventure had

dared the terrors of the ocean, and the perils of new climates, at an

almost interminable distance from home, the massacres and plunders

habitual to heathen conquest must have impeded, if not wholly broken

up, the progress of the feeble population already settling on the soil;

or perhaps trained that population to habits of ferocity like their

own, and turned a peaceful and pastoral land into a scene of slaughter

and misery?

The discovery of the American Continent flashed on the world like the

discovery of a new Creation. In reading the correspondence of the

learned at the time, the return of Columbus, and the knowledge which

that return brought, is spoken of with a rapture of language more

resembling an Arabian tale than the narrative of the most adventurous

voyage of man. The primitive races of their fellow-beings, living

in the simplicity of nature, under forests of the palm, with all

delicious fruits for their food, with gold and pearls for their toys,

and the rich treasures of new plants and animals of all species for

their indulgence and their use, were described with the astonishment

and delight of a dream of Fairy-land, or the still richer visions of

restored Paradise.

Yet, when the hues of imagination grew colourless by time, the

continents of the West displayed to the ripened knowledge of Europe

virtues only still more substantial. The contrast between the northern

and southern portions of the New World is of the most striking kind.

It is scarcely less marked than the distinction between the broken,

deeply-divided, and well-watered surface of Europe, and the broad

plains, vast mountain ranges, and few, but mighty rivers, which form

the characteristic features of Asia. In North America, we see a land of

singularly varied surface, in its primitive state, covered with forest;

with an uncertain climate; a soil seldom luxuriant, often sterile,

every where requiring, and generally rewarding human industry; watered

by many rivers, penetrated in almost every direction by navigable

streams, and traversed from north to south, an unusual direction for

rivers, by an immense stream, the Mississippi, bringing down the furs,

the produce of the north, the corn of the temperate zone, the fruits

of the tropics, and connecting all those regions with the commerce of

Europe: a natural canal, of more than two thousand miles, without a

perceptible difference of breadth, from New Orleans to the falls of St

Anthony. The Arkansas, Missouri, Ohio, noble rivers, traverse the land

in a variety of directions, with courses of from fifteen hundred to two

thousand miles; and to the north of the United States, a chain of vast

inland seas, a succession of Mediterraneans, surrounded by productive

provinces, rapidly filling with a busy population.

The southern portion of the New World exhibits the plains of Tartary,

the solitary mountain range of India, the fertility of the Asiatic

soil. It, too, has its Ganges and its Indus, in the Amazon and the Rio

de la Plata; but its smaller streams are few and feeble. It has the

fiery heat of India, the dangerous exhalations of the jungle, the tiger

and the lion, though of a less daring and powerful species; and the

native, dark, delicate, timid, and indolent, as the Hindoo.

Without speaking of the contrast as perfectly sustained in all its

points, it is unquestionable that North and South America have been

formed for two great families of humankind as distinct as energy and

ease; that the North is to be possessed only as the conquest of toil,

while the South allows of the languor into whose hand the fruit drops

from the tree.

May it not also be rationally conjectured, that in the discovery

Europe and America were equally the objects of the Providential

benevolence? It was palpably the Divine will to give Europe a new and

powerful advance in the fifteenth century. Printing, gunpowder, and

the mariner’s compass, were its gifts to Europe; to be followed and

consummated in that new impulse at once to religious truth and to

social improvement, which so soon transpired in the German Reformation,

and in the commercial system of England and the continental nations.

The extension of this mighty impulse to America rapidly followed.

The first English colony was planted in North America in the reign

of Elizabeth, the great protectress of Protestantism; and the first

authentic knowledge of South America was brought to Europe by the

discoveries of Englishmen, following the route of Columbus, and going

beyond him. It is true that the intercourse of the South with the

energetic qualities and free principles of Europe was impeded by an

influence which, from its first being, has been hostile to the free

progress of the human mind. The Popedom threw its shadow over Spanish

America, and the great experiment of civilisation was comparatively

thrown away wherever the priest of Rome was paramount. The land, too,

witnessed a succession of slaughters, and the still more fearful trade

in the unfortunate natives of Africa. But the most powerful contrast

was furnished to mankind in the rapid growth of the Protestant states

of the north, in their increasing commerce, in the vigour of their

laws, in the activity of the public mind, and the ascent of their

scattered and feeble communities into the rank and the enjoyments of a

great nation.

Nor are we to speak of South America as having wholly slept during the

period since its discovery. If all the larger faculties which give

nations a place in history remained in a state of collapse under the

pressure of Spain, society had made a forward step in every province

of that great territory. The inhabitants had never relapsed into

their primitive barbarism; they had laws, commerce, manufactures, and

literature, all in a ruder degree than as developed under the vivid

activity of Europe, but all raising the provinces into a gradual

capacity of social vigour, of popular civilisation, and perhaps even of

that pure religion without which national power is only national evil.

Perhaps the cloud which has rested for so many ages over the moral

soil of South America, may have been suffered to remain until the soil

itself acquired strength for a larger product under a more industrious

generation. It is not improbable that as the gold and silver of the

South were evidently developed, in the fifteenth century, to supply the

new commercial impulse of that time of European advance, the still more

copious, and still more important, agricultural wealth of countries

overflowing with unused exuberance--the magnificent tropical fertility

of the continents beyond the ocean--may have been reserved to increase

the opulence and stimulate the ardour of a period which the Steam-boat

and the Railway have marked for a mighty change in the earth; and

in which they may be only the first fruits of scientific skill, the

promises of inventions still more powerful, the heralds of a general

progress of mankind, to whose colossal strides all the past is feeble,

unpurposed, and ineffectual.

The invasion of the Mexican territory by the army of the United States

has naturally attracted the eyes of Europe; and whether the war shall

issue in a total conquest or in a hollow peace, its results must

strongly affect the future condition of the country. Mexico must at

once take the bold attitude of an empire, or must be dis-severed,

province by province, until its very name is no more. But no country

of the western world has a position more fitted for empire. Washed

on the east by the gulf which bears its name, and on the west by the

Pacific, it thus possesses direct access to two oceans, and by them

to the most opulent regions of the globe. On the south it can dread

no rival in the struggling state of Guatemala. But the north is the

true frontier on which the battle of its existence is to be fought,

if fought at all, for beyond that barrier stretch the United States.

The extent of its territory startles European conceptions, extending

in north latitude from fifteen to forty-two degrees, and in west

longitude from eighty-seven to one hundred and twenty-five degrees.

Its surface, on a general calculation, contains about a million and a

half of square miles, or about _seven_ times the dimensions of France.

Yet, though thus approaching the equator, the climate of Mexico is in

general highly favourable to life and to the products of the temperate

zone: the incomparably larger portion of its surface being a succession

of table-lands or elevated plains, where, with the sun of the tropics

blazing almost vertically, the evenings are refreshingly cool, the

breeze is felt from the mountains or the ocean, and the days are

scarcely hotter than those of Europe.

We now glance at the principal features of the great territory.

Vera Cruz, its chief commercial city, and medium of intercourse with

Europe, is handsomely built, exhibiting the usual signs of commercial

wealth, in the stateliness of its private houses, and in the rarer

peculiarity of wide and cleanly streets. But when did commerce

build with any other consideration than that of trade? Vera Cruz is

proverbially unhealthy; a range of swamps in the vicinity loads the

summer air with fatal exhalations; and the Vomito, the name for a

rapid disease, evidently akin to the fearful Black-vomit of Africa,

requires either the most vigilant precaution, or more probably the most

fortunate chance, to escape its immediate seizure of the frame. Yet it

is said that this disease seldom attacks the natives of the city.

But the general susceptibility of the European frame to tropical

disease, is tried here in almost every shape of suffering; and typhus,

yellow fever, and almost pestilence, terribly thin the concourse of the

stranger.

Yet such is the courage of money-making in all parts of the world, that

climate is regarded as only a bugbear. The trader in Vera Cruz enters

on the campaign against “all the ills that flesh is heir to,” as if

he had a patent for life. The streets, in the trading season, exhibit

perpetual crowds; the harbour is full of masts, nestling under the

protection of St Juan d’Ulloa from the bursts of wind which sometimes

come with terrible violence from the north; and the funeral and the

festivity go on together, and without much impeding each other, in

a land which for the time exhibits the very Festino, or fête of the

Merchant, the Sailor, and the Creole.

But, when this season ends, Vera Cruz is as sad as a dungeon, as

silent as a monastery, and as sickly as an hospital. The señoras, a

race of perfectly Spanish-visaged, black-eyed, and very coquettish

beauties, sit all day drooping in their balconies, like doves upon

the housetops, perhaps longing for a hurricane, an earthquake, or any

thing which may break up the monotony of their existence. The sound of

a guitar, a passing footstep, nay, the whine of a beggar, sets a whole

street in motion, and there is a general rustling of mantillas, and a

general rush to the windows. The men bear their calamity better; the

señor, when he has once a cigar between his sallow lips, has made up

his mind for the day. Whether he stands in the sunshine or sits in the

shade--whether he wakes or sleeps, the cigar serves him for all the

exercise of his animal functions. His brain is as much enveloped in

smoke as his moustaches; his cares vanish like the smoke itself. It is

not until his cigar-box is empty, that he reverts to the consciousness

of his being an inhabitant of this world of ours.

But some are of a more aspiring disposition. They now and then glance

round upon the noble landscape which encircles their city. But they do

this with the most dexterous determination not to move a limb. Their

houses are flat-roofed; some of them have little glazed chambers on the

roofs; and there they sit with the sky above them, the mountains round

them, and the sea beneath them, dreaming away like so many dormice. One

of their American describers compares the whole well-bred population

to a colony of beavers; but, we presume, _without_ the industry of

the quadruped. Their still closer resemblance would be to a wax-work

collection on a large scale, where tinsel petticoats, woollen wigs, and

bugle eyes imitate humanity, and every thing is before the spectator

but life.

Jonathan, who thinks himself born to lay hold on every scrap of the

globe by which he can turn one cent into two, looks, of course, on

the whole shore of the gulf--towns, mines, and mountains--as his own.

He frees himself from all scruples on the subject by the obvious

convenience of the conception.

“No spot of the earth,” says one of those neighbourly persons, “will be

more desirable than the soil of Mexico for a residence, whenever it is

in possession of _our race_, with the government and laws which they

carry with them wherever they go. The march of time is not more certain

than that _this will be_, and probably at _no distant day_.”

And, on this showing, the man of “government and laws” proceeds to

“sink, burn, and destroy,” in the “great cause of humanity,” edifies

the native by grapeshot, and polishes him with the cutlass. In those

exploits of a “free and enlightened” people, our only surprise is that

diplomacy itself takes the trouble of offering any apology whatever.

The comparative powers of resistance and attack settle the conscience

of the affair in a word. The seizure is easy, and therefore why should

it not be made? The riflemen of Kentucky and the hunters of Virginia,

the squatters of Ohio and the sympathizers of Massachusets, all see

the affair in the proper light; and why should the philosopher or

the philanthropist, the man of justice or the man of religion, be

listened to on subjects so much more easily settled by the rattle of

twelve-pounders? The right of making war on Mexico has not yet found a

single defender but in the streets; not a single ground of defence but

in the roar of the rabble; not a single plea but in the convenience

of the possession. Even the American journals have given up their old

half-savage rant of universal conquest. Every drop of blood shed in a

war of aggression is sure to be avenged.

The present town is not the town of Cortes. His “Villa Rica de Vera

Cruz” (The Rich City of the True Cross) was seated six miles further

inland. But trade decided against the choice of the great soldier.

The pen, in this instance, conquered the sword a century before the

conflict began in Europe. The population of the old city slipped away

to the new and hasty hovels on the shore; and the ground consecrated by

the banner of the Spanish hero was left to the donkey and the thistle.

The visible protector of the city and harbour (it has saints

innumerable) is the island of St Juan de Ulloa, lying within 600 yards

of the mole; and on which stands the well-known fortress. Ships, of

course, pass immediately under its guns; and it is regarded as the

most powerful fortress in Mexico, or perhaps in the New World, being

now thoroughly armed. This is a different state of things from the

condition in which it was found by the French squadron in 1839. The

ramparts were then scarcely mounted, the guns were more dangerous to

the garrison than to the enemy, and of regular artillerists there

were few or none; engineers were unheard of. The French naturally did

as they pleased; achieved a magnanimous triumph over bare walls, and

plucked a laurel for the Prince de Joinville from the most barren of

all possible soils of victory; but it served for a bulletin. They would

probably now find another kind of reception, for the ramparts _have_

guns, and the guns have artillerymen.

The aspect of the Mexican coast from the sea is singularly bold. On the

north and west the waters of the Gulf wash a level shore; but on the

south all is a crescent of mountains, rising to a general height of

12,000 feet above the level of the sea; but the noblest object is the

snow-capped pinnacle of Orizaba, rising, according to Humboldt, 17,400

feet, and covered with perpetual snow from the height of 15,092. This

is a volcanic mountain, but which has slept since the middle of the

sixteenth century; what must have been its magnificence when its summit

was covered with flame!

The mode of conveyance between Vera Cruz and Mexico is chiefly by an

establishment of stage-coaches, making three journeys a-week between

the capitals. Those vehicles, originally established by an American

of the United States, are now the property of a Mexican whom they are

rapidly making rich. The horses are Mexican, and, though small, are

strong and spirited. The stage leaves Vera Cruz at eleven at night, and

arrives about three o’clock in the next afternoon at Jalapa, a distance

of about seventy miles, and a continual ascent through mountains. The

houses on the wayside are few and wretched, constructed of canes ten

feet long, fixed in the ground, and covered with palm-tree leaves.

The villages strongly resemble those of the American Indians; hovels

ten or twelve feet square, with a small patch of ground for Chillies

and Indian corn--the only difference of those original styles of

architecture being, that the northern builds with logs, the southern

with mud in the shape of bricks.

A large portion of the country between those two towns belonged to the

well-known General Santa Anna. The soil of his vast estate is fertile,

but left to its natural fertility--the General being a shepherd,

and said to have from forty to fifty thousand head of cattle in his

pastures. He also acts the farmer, and takes in cattle to graze. His

demand is certainly not high; and Yorkshire will be astonished to hear

that he feeds them at forty dollars the hundred.

The ascent of the mountain range, and the varieties of the road,

naturally keep the traveller on the _qui vive_. With the air singularly

transparent, with the brightest of skies above, and the most varied

of southern landscapes stretching to an unlimited extent below, the

eye finds a continual feast. The city of Jalapa stands on the slope,

throned on a shelf of the mountain 4000 feet above the sea, and with

4000 feet of the bold and sunny range above it. The whole horizon,

except in the direction of Vera Cruz, is a circle of mountains, and

towering above them all, at a distance of twenty-five miles, (which,

from the clearness of the air, seems scarcely the fourth part of the

distance,) rises the splendid cone of Orizaba. On the summit of the

range stands Perote, a town connected with a strong fortress, perhaps

the highest in position that the world exhibits--8500 feet above the

shore.

Height makes the difference between heat and cold every where. In

the middle of a summer which burns the blood in the human frame at

Vera Cruz, men in Perote button their coats to the chin, and sleep in

blankets. Thus winter is brought from the Poles to the Tropic, and the

Mexican shivers under the most fiery sunshine of the globe.

The next stage is Puebla--eighty miles; the road passes over a vast

plain generally without a sign of cultivation, as generally destitute

of inhabitants, and with scarcely a tree, and scarcely a stream. It

is difficult to know to what purpose this huge prairie can be turned,

except to a field of battle. As the road approaches Puebla, there

are farms erected by the town, and from which its wants are chiefly

supplied. They produce wheat, barley, and Indian corn. The only fodder

for horses is wheaten straw, but on this they contrive to “grow fat;”

we are not called on to account for the phenomenon.

But every nation loves to intoxicate itself, and the Mexican boasts

of the most nauseous invention for the purpose among the discoveries

of man. Pulque, the national beverage, is the juice of the Agave

Americana, fermented. The original process by which the fermentation is

produced is one which we shall not venture to detail; but the liquor

obtained from the section of the plant is drawn up by a rude syphon,

and poured into dressed ox-hides. The taste is mawkish, and the smell

is noisome. Yet, to the Mexican, it is nectar and ambrosia together.

Pulque is to him meat, drink, and clothing, for without it the world

has no pleasures. The most remarkable circumstance is, that it is

without strength. Thus it wants the charm of brandy, which may madden,

but which at least warms; or aquafortis, which the Pole and the Russ

are said to drink as a qualifier of their excesses in train oil; but

the Mexican would rather die, or even fight, than dispense with his

pulque; and if Santa Anna had but put his warriors on short allowance

of the national liquor before his last battle, and promised them double

allowance after it, he would probably have been, at this moment, on the

Mexican throne.

The Agave, called by the natives Maguey, is certainly an extraordinary

instance of succulency, and an unrivalled acquisition to a thirsty

population. A single plant of the Agave has been known to supply one

hundred and fifty gallons of this sap. In good land it grows to an

enormous size, the centre stem often thirty feet high, and twelve or

fifteen inches in diameter at the bottom. When the plant is in flower,

which occurs from seven to fifteen years old, the centre stem is cut

off at the bottom, and the juice is collected.

Humbolt says, that a single plant will yield four hundred and fifty-two

cubic inches of liquor in twenty-four hours, for four or five months,

which would give upwards of four hundred gallons. How curious are the

distributions of nature! All this profuse efflux of mawkish fluid would

be thrown away in any other country. But nature has given the Mexican a

palate for its enjoyment, and to him the draught is rapture.

Mexico is the land for the lovers of pumice-stone. The whole road from

Vera Cruz to the capital is covered with remnants of lava. Every plain

seems to have been burnt up by eruptions a thousand years old, or,

according to the time-table of the geologist, from ten to ten thousand

millions of years ago. With the mountain tops all on fire, and the

plains waving with an inundation of flame, Mexico must have been a

splendid, though rather an inconvenient residence, in the “olden time.”

Mexican agriculture has not yet attained the invention of an iron

ploughshare; its substitute is primitive, and wooden. It evidently

dates as far back as the times of the Dispersion. Nor, with thousands

and tens of thousands of horses, have they yet discovered that a

horse may be yoked to a plough. The Turks say, that the plague exists

only where Mahometanism is the religion, and they seem to regard the

distinction as a peculiar favour of Providence. It has been said by, or

for, the Spaniards of the present day, that no railroad exists, nor,

we presume, _can_ exist, “where the Spanish language is spoken.” The

late abortive attempts to make a railway from Bayonne to Madrid, so far

prove the incompatibility of railways with the tongue of the Peninsula.

A little effort of human presumption in Cuba, has been ventured on, in

the shape of a brief railway, which already goes, as we are informed,

at the rate of some half-dozen miles an hour. But as this is a

dangerous speed to a Spaniard, we naturally suppose that the enterprise

will be abandoned. But though the majority of the population, between

drinking pulque and smoking cigars, find their hands completely full,

one class is at least sufficiently active. Robbers in Mexico are what

pedlars used to be in England; they keep up the life of the villages,

plunder wherever they can, cheat where they cannot plunder, ride

stout horses, and lead, on the whole, a varied, and sometimes a very

gay life. One of the American travellers saw, at one of the villages

where the stage changed horses, a dashing and picturesque figure,

gaudily dressed, who rode by on a handsome horse richly caparisoned.

On inquiring if the coachman knew him, the answer was, that he knew

him perfectly well, and that he was the captain of a band of robbers,

who had plundered the stage several times since the whip and reins had

been in his hands. On the Americans urging the question, why he had not

brought the robber to punishment, the answer was, “that he would be

sure to be shot by some of the band the next time he passed the road;”

the honour of Mexican thieves being peculiarly nice upon this point. It

appeared that the dashing horseman had gone through the village on a

_reconnaissance_, but probably not liking the obvious preparations of

the travellers, had postponed the caption.

The mode of managing things in this somnolent country, is remarkable

for its tranquillity. The American who narrates the circumstance,

had taken with him from Vera Cruz four dragoons; but on accidentally

enquiring on the road into the state of their arms, he found that but

one carabine had a lock in fighting order, and even that one was not

loaded; on which he dismissed the guard, and trusted to his companions,

who were all well armed. The Mexican travellers, taking the matter in

another way, never carry arms, but prepare a small purse “to be robbed

of,” of which they are robbed accordingly. A few miles from Perote,

the road winds round a high hill, and the passengers generally get

out and walk. The Americans on this occasion had left their arms in

the carriage, but their more prudent chief immediately ordered them

to carry them in their hands, and in the course of the ascent, they

pounced upon a group of ruffians whom the driver pronounced to be

robbers; and who, but for their arms, would probably have attacked

them. In less than a month after this, five or six Americans having

left their arms in the stage at this spot, _were_ attacked, and stript

of every cent belonging to them.

It must be owned that this country has fine advantages for the

gentlemen of the road. The highway between Vera Cruz and Mexico is the

great conduit of life in the country. Nearly all the commerce goes by

that way, and ninety out of every hundred travellers pass by the same

route. The chief portion of the road is through an absolute desert. It

frequently winds up the sides of mountains, and then is bordered by

forests of evergreens, forming a capital shelter for the land pirate,

the whole being a combination of Hounslow Heath and Shooter’s Hill on a

grand scale, and making highway robbery not merely a showy but a safe

speculation, the gaming-table being the chief recruiting-office of the

whole battalion of Mercury.

The statistics of gaming might borrow a chapter from Mexico. The

passion for play is public, universal, and unbounded. It is probably

superior even to the passion for pulque. Every one plays, and plays

for all that he is worth in the world, and often for more. But he

has his resource--the road. A man who has lost his last dollar, but

who is determined to play on till he dies, lays himself under strong

temptations of coveting his neighbour’s goods. The hour when the

stages pass is known to every one; the points of the road where they

must go slowly up the hill, are familiar to all highway recollections.

Associates are expeditiously found among the loiterers, who, after

their own ruin, sit round the room watching the luck of others. The

band is formed in a moment; they take the road without delay, post

themselves in the evergreens, enjoy the finest imaginable prospect,

and breathe the most refreshing air, until the creaking of the

coach-wheels puts them on the alert. They then exhibit their weapons,

the passengers produce their little purses, the stage is robbed of

every thing portable, or convertible into cash, the band return to the

gaming-table, fling out their coin, and play till they are either rich

or ruined once more.

Some time after an adventure, such as we have described, the stage

was robbed near Puebla by a gang, all of whom had the appearance of

gentlemen. When the operation of rifling every body and every thing

was completed, one of the robbers observed--“that they must not be

looked on as professional thieves, for they were gentlemen; but having

been unfortunate at play, they were forced to put the company to this

inconvenience, for which they requested their particular pardon.”

An incident of this order occurring in the instance of a public

personage, some years before, long excited remarkable interest. The

Swiss consul had been assassinated at noonday. A carriage had driven up

to his door, out of which three men came, one in the dress of a priest.

On the doors being opened they seized and gagged the porter, rushed

into the apartment where the consul was sitting, murdered and robbed

him, and then retreated. None knew whence they came or whither they

went; but the murdered man, in his dying struggle, had torn a button

off the coat of one of the robbers, which they found still clenched

in his hand. A soldier was shortly after seen with more money than he

could account for; suspicion naturally fell upon him; his quarters

were searched, and one of his coats was found with the button torn

off. He was convicted, but relied upon a pardon through the Colonel

Yanez, chief aide-de-camp of the president Santa Anna, who was his

accomplice in the transaction. On being brought out for execution, and

placed on the fatal bench where criminals are strangled, he cried out,

“Stop, I will acknowledge my accomplices;” and he pronounced the name

of the colonel. Search was immediately made in the house of Yanez,

and a letter in cipher was found, connecting him with this and other

robberies. This letter was left in the hands of one of the judges:

he was offered a large sum to destroy it, and refused. In a few days

after he was found dead, as was supposed, by poison. The paper was then

transferred to another judge who was offered the same bribe, and who

promised to destroy it; but on conferring with his priest, though he

took the money, he shrank from the actual destruction of the document

and kept it in silence. Yanez was brought to trial, and, believing that

the paper was no longer in existence, treated the charge with contempt.

The paper was produced, and the aide-de-camp was condemned and executed.

Puebla is one of the handsomest cities in the Mexican territory. The

houses are lofty, and in good taste, and the streets are wide and clean

About six miles from the city stood Choluta, which Cortes described “as

having a population of forty thousand citizens, well clothed,” and as

it might appear, peculiarly devout according to their own style, for

the conqueror counted in it the towers of four hundred idol temples. Of

this city not a vestige remains but an immense mound of brick, on which

now stands a Romish chapel.

Beyond Puebla, cultivation extends to a considerable distance on both

sides of the road. To the right lies the republic of Tlascala, so

memorable in the history of the Spanish conquest, and once crowded

with a population of warriors. The road then runs at the foot of

Pococatapetl, the highest of the Mexican mountains, seventeen thousand

feet above the level of the sea. The capital is now approached; and

on passing over the next ridge, the first glimpse is caught of the

famous valley and city of Mexico. From this ridge Cortes had the first

view of his conquest. It must have been an object of indescribable

interest to the great soldier who had fought his way to the possession

of the noblest prize of his age. The valley of Mexico, a circuit of

seventeen hundred square miles, must then have been a most magnificent

sight, if it be true that it contained “forty cities, and villages

without number.” Time, war, and the fatal government of Spain, have

nearly turned this splendid tract into a desert. But it still has

features combining the picturesque with the grand. The valley partially

resembles the crater of an immense volcano wholly surrounded by

mountains, some of them rising ten thousand feet above the city. In the

centre of this vast oval basin is a lake, or rather a chain of lakes,

through the midst of which the road now passes for about eighteen

miles, on a raised causeway. The city stands in the north-eastern

quarter of the valley, not more than three miles from the mountains, at

an elevation of seven thousand four hundred and seventy feet, and its

position seems obviously made for the capital of an empire.

Mexico is regarded as the “stateliest city” in the New World. Its

plan was laid, and the principal portion of its public buildings are

said to have been designed, by Cortes. They bear all the impress of

a superb mind. The habitual meanness of democratical building has no

place there; the majority of the fabrics were evidently constructed

by a man to whom the royal architecture of the European nations was

familiar, and the finest houses in the city are still inhabited by the

descendants of the conqueror.

The principal square is the pride of the Mexicans, and the admiration

of travellers. It has an area of twelve acres; unluckily, this fine

space, which in England would be covered with verdant turf, shrubs,

and flowers, is covered only with pavement. But the buildings are on

a noble scale. The Cathedral fills one whole side of the square, the

Palace another, and the sites of both are memorable and historical;

the Cathedral standing on the ground where once stood the great idol

temple, and the Palace on the ground of the palace of Montezuma! The

latter building is 500 feet long, and contains the public offices,

besides the apartments of the President. The Cathedral is of striking

Gothic architecture, and after all the pressures and plunderings of the

later period, still retains immense wealth. The high altar is covered

with plates of silver, interspersed with ornaments of massive gold.

This altar is inclosed with a balustrade a hundred feet long, not less

precious than the high altar itself. It is composed of an amalgam of

gold, silver, and copper, richly flourished and figured. It is said

that an offer had been made to purchase it at its weight in silver,

giving half a million of dollars besides. Of this balustrade there

are not less in the building than 300 feet. Statues, vases, and huge

candlesticks of the precious metals, meet the eye every where; and yet

it is said that the still more precious portion of the treasure is

hidden from the popular eye. The streets are wide, and cross each other

at right angles, dividing the whole city into squares. But the Romish

habit of giving the most sacred names to common things, is acted on in

Mexico with most offensive familiarity. The names of the streets are

instances of this profanation, which has existed wherever monks have

been the masters. Thus, the Mexican will tell you that he lives in

“Jesus,” or in the “Holy Ghost.” In the Spanish navy the most sacred

names were similarly profaned; and the Santissima Trinidada (the Most

Holy Trinity) was a flag-ship in the fleet destroyed at Trafalgar. What

blasphemies and brutalities must not have been mingled with this sacred

name in the mouths of a crew!

The churches are the chief buildings in the city, some of them of great

size, and all filled with plate and other wealth. Yet the houses, even

of the most opulent families, exhibit some of the vilest habits of the

vilest southern cities of Europe. To pass over other matters, in the

whole city there is perhaps not a stable separate from the house. The

stud is on the basement story, and it may be conceived how repulsive

must be the effects of such an arrangement in the burning climate of

Mexico! The servants’ rooms are also upon this floor; and in some of

the principal houses the visitors have to pass through this row of

stables and sleeping rooms on their way to the chief apartments. In

some, too, of the larger private houses, no less than thirty or forty

families reside, each renting one or two rooms, and having a common

stair of exit to the street. This crowding of families is produced,

in the first instance, by the narrow limits of the city, which is

scarcely more than two miles in length by a mile and a half in breadth;

and in the next, by the lazy habits of their Spanish ancestry, which

still gathered them together for the sake of gossiping and idling, and

which seem every where to have had an abhorrence of cleanliness, of

fresh air, and of the sight of a field; the population thus festering

on each other, while the country round them is open, healthful, and

cheerful. The inhabitants, to the amount of two hundred thousand,

evidently prefer half suffocation in an atmosphere that tortures the

nostrils of all strangers; and are content with the dust and dimness,

the heat and the effluvia, naturally generated by a tropical sun acting

upon a crowded population.

In addition to this voluntary offence, Mexico has two natural plagues,

inundations and earthquakes. The city was once a kind of American

Venice, wholly surrounded by water, penetrated by water, and built on

piles in the water. A gigantic canal, which was tunnelled through its

mountain barrier in the beginning of the seventeenth century, partially

drained the waters of the lakes, and left it on firm ground. But the

lakes, from time to time, take their revenge; clouds of a peculiarly

ominous aspect begin to roll along the mountains, until they break down

in a deluge. Then the genius of the land of monks exhibits itself, and

all the bells in the city are rung, whether to frighten the torrent,

or to propitiate the Deity. But the rain still comes down in sheets,

and the torrents roar louder. The bells meet the enemy by still louder

peals. At length the clouds are drained, and the torrents disappear;

the bells have the praise. The city recovers its spirits, finds that

its time for being swept from the earth has not yet arrived; the sun

shines once more, and the monks have all the credit of this triumph

over Satan and Nature.

Mexico has its museum, and it contains some curiosities which could

not be supplied in any other part of the world. They are almost

wholly Mexican. The weapons found among the people at the time of

the conquest: rude lances, daggers, bows and arrows, with the native

armour of cotton, and those wooden drums which the old Spaniards seem

to have dreaded more than the arms. Among them is the Mexican “razor

sword,” a staff with four projecting blades, made of volcanic glass,

and brought to such sharpness that a stroke has been known to cut off a

horse’s head. In the museum there are some still more curious specimens

of their manufactures, paper made from the Cactus, with much of their

hieroglyphic writing on it. One of these rolls exhibits the Mexican

idea of the deluge, and among other details shows “the bird with a

branch in its claw.” It is said that they had traditions of the leading

events from the Creation to the Deluge, nearly resembling the Mosaic

history; but that from the Deluge downwards all records have escaped

them. But the museum contains more modern and more characteristic

remains. Among the rest, the armour of Cortes.

From its size, its wearer must have been a man of small stature,

and about the size of Napoleon. The armour of the brave Alvarado is

also in the museum, and is even smaller than that of Cortes; but,

as a covering of the form, both are complete. The wearer could have

been vulnerable only at the joints; the horse of the man-at-arms

was similarly protected, being in fact covered all over either with

steel or bull’s hide. The use of cannon finally put an end to the

wearing of armour, which was found to be useless against weight of

metal. It is now partially reviving in the cuirass, and unquestionably

ought to be revived among the infantry so far as covering the front

of the soldiers. The idea is childish that this would degrade the

intrepidity of the troops. The armour of knighthood did not degrade

its intrepidity; the cuirasses of our dragoons have not degraded their

intrepidity; nor will any man be the less daring from the sense that he

is less exposed to the casualties of the field.

A colossal bronze statue of Charles IV. stands in the court-yard of

the museum, but its history is of higher value than its subject; that

history being, that it was designed by one native Mexican, and cast by

another. Thus at least showing that the cultivation of the fine arts is

not impossible, even in Spanish America.

There also is the great sacrificial stone on which human victims bled,

a circular mass four feet high and eight in diameter, with figures in

relief elaborately carved on the top and sides. On this stone sixty-two

of the companions of Cortes were put to death before the eyes of their

countrymen.

The finance of Mexico becomes a matter of European importance, in a

period which should be called the “Age of Loans.” The debt in 1844 was

about one hundred millions of dollars, of which sixty millions are due

to foreigners. But the territory is evidently the richest in silver

that the world has yet seen, and possibly exceeding in mineral wealth

all the world beside, if we except the gold sands of the Ural, which

have lately teemed with such marvellous produce. Humboldt reckoned

no less than three thousand silver mines in Mexico in the year 1804.

But not one fiftieth of those mines continue to be worked, a result

caused by the distance of quicksilver in the mines of Old Spain. The

mines produce but little gold, and that little is generally found in

combination with silver. But the quantity of silver is absolutely

astonishing. The mines still continue to give a produce as large as

in any year of the last two centuries, in which Humboldt computes the

average produce at twelve millions of dollars annually. But allowing

for the quantity notoriously smuggled out of the country, besides the

eighteen millions and a half of gold and silver actually registered for

exportation, the produce may amount to twenty-four millions of dollars

yearly. This increase evidently arises from the greater tranquillity of

the country; for in the times of actual revolution, it frequently sank

to three or four millions.

The American writer from whom we have taken these calculations,

cannot help betraying the propensity of Yankeeism, by talking of the

wonders which would be done in such a country if it were once in

the possession of Jonathan. He thinks that the produce of the mines

would be “at least five times as great as it is now,” that every mine

would be worked, and that many more will be discovered. Calculating

the exports of British produce at two hundred and sixty millions of

dollars yearly, he thinks that “Mexico, if in full action, would equal

that amount in ten years.” But his words are more significant still

with respect to the relations of the United States. We are to remember

that those words were written previously to the aggression which has

just taken place against Mexico, and which the Americans pretend to be

perfectly innocent and justifiable. And also, that they are written by

an American minister. “Recent manifestation,” says this writer, “of a

rabid, not to say rapacious spirit of acquisition of territory on the

part of our countrymen, may well cause a race so inferior in all the

elements of power to tremble for the tenure by which they hold this

Eldorado. It is not often, with nations at least, that such temptations

are resisted, or that ‘danger winks on opportunity.’ I trust, however,

that our maxim ever will be, ‘noble ends by worthy means,’ and that we

may remember that wealth improperly acquired never ultimately benefited

an individual or a nation.”

Those are wise and just sentiments. But we unluckily see the practical

morality of the Americans on the subject, in the invasion of the

territory, and the slaughter of the natives.

The mineral produce is not confined to gold and silver. No country

produces larger masses of that iron which so much better deserves the

name of precious metal, if we are to estimate its value by its use. And

tin, lead, and copper are also found in large masses.

The fertility of the soil, where it receives any tolerable cultivation,

is also remarkable, and two crops may be raised in one year. But

the farmers have neither capital nor inclination to cultivate the

soil. Having no market, they have no use for their superfluity, and

therefore they raise no superfluity. A considerable portion of the

whole territory is also distributed into immense pastures of eighty or

a hundred thousand cattle, and fifteen or twenty thousand mules and

horses, the grass being green all the year round, and those animals

being left to the course of nature. Yet, except when there is a

government demand to mount the cavalry, those immense herds of horses

seldom find a purchaser, nearly all agricultural work being done by

oxen. Horses are sold at from eight to ten dollars a-piece. But the

Mexicans exhibit the old Spanish preference for mules and a pair of

handsome carriage mules will cost one thousand dollars.

Thus, in all the precious products of the earth, Mexico may stand

rivalry with the most favoured nations. It is the land of the

cochineal; it produces all the rice which is required for the food of

the people; the silk-worm might there be multiplied to any extent;

cotton can be raised in almost every province to a boundless amount.

The high grounds are covered with fine timber, and, where nothing

else is produced, bee’s-wax abounds; this is consumed chiefly in the

churches, where a part of their religion consists in keeping candles

perpetually burning. Yet the Mexican bee-masters are as careless as the

rest of their countrymen, and they do not produce wax enough for this

holy ignition, and great quantities are imported accordingly.

The history of Mexico, since the Spanish conquest, is a combination of

the histories of European sovereignty and American republicanism.

Mexico was not among the discoveries of the great Columbus, though he

approached Yucatan. That peninsula was first seen in 1517 by Cordova.

In 1519 the famous Hernan Cortes landed on the site of Vera Cruz. After

founding Villa Rica, he began his memorable march into the territory

of Montezuma, King of the Aztecs. It cost him two years of desperate

struggle to make good his ground; the Mexicans exhibited occasional

bravery, and fought with the fervour of devotees to their king and

their idols. But the novelty of the Spanish arms, the belief in an

ancient prediction that “the kingdom was to be conquered from the

sea,” and, above all, the indefatigable bravery of Cortes, finally

established the supremacy of Spain.

The great source of calamity to Spain has always been its pride. The

groundless sense of personal superiority in every thing belonging to

Spain, its religion, its government, its literature, and its people,

has, during the last four hundred years of European advance, kept Spain

stationary. The country was pronounced to be perfect, and what is

the use of trying to improve perfection? But the Spaniard pronounced

himself as perfect as the country; and, therefore, what was the use

of his adopting the inventions, habits, or intelligence of others? He

disdained them all, and therefore continued the byword of ignorance,

arrogance, and prejudice, to all nations. The troops of Cortes, and

the gallant adventurers who followed them as settlers in the Spanish

colonies, had descendants who soon began to form a powerful population.

Among those, a government possessed of common sense would have found

the natural support of the parent state. But the man of Spain scorned

to acknowledge the equality even of the Spanish blood, when born in the

colonies; and no office of trust, and no commission in the colonial

troops, could be given to a Creole. The foundation of hostility was

thus laid at once, and on it was raised a large superstructure.

Another race soon rose, the children of Spaniards by native women, the

Mestizos. They, too, were excluded from all employments. The revolt of

the United States would probably have applied the torch to this mass of

combustible matter, but for the jealousy of the two races. As the men

of Old Spain despised the Creole, the Creole despised the Mestizo. Thus

the power of Spain remained guarded by the jealousies of both.

But a new period was at hand. The infamous seizure of Spain by Napoleon

in 1808, roused both races to an abhorrence of the French name, and

a determination to separate themselves from a kingdom which could

now be regarded only as a French province. Again jealousy prevailed;

the Creoles demanded a national representation, the Spanish troops

and _employés_ a royal government. In the midst of their disputes,

a powerful enemy appeared. The Mestizos and Indians united under a

village priest, Hidalgo, and overran the country. This incursion

brought the disputants to a sense of their own peril; they collected

troops, were beaten by the bold priest, rallied for another field, beat

him, took him prisoner in the battle, and put him to death.

But the spirit of revolt had now become popular, and another priest,

Morellos, was found to head another insurrection. His talents and

intrepidity swept all before him for a period, and the “independence

of Mexico” was declared by a “national assembly” in November 1813.

But Morellos was finally unfortunate, was attacked by the Spanish

general Colleja, who seems to have been a man of military genius, was

taken prisoner, and shot. The Old Spaniards were once more masters,

and Apodaca, a man of intelligence and conduct, was sent from Spain as

viceroy.

But sudden tumults broke out in Spain itself. The “Constitution of

1820” was proclaimed, the parties in Mexico followed the example, and

a constitution strongly tending to democracy was proposed. It produced

a total dissolution of the alliance between the Creoles and the Old

Spaniards, the former demanding a government virtually independent, the

latter adhering to Spain. In the confusion, Iturbide, a young Creole

of an ancient family, and of large possessions, pushed his way into

power, and, to the astonishment of all Western republicanism, in 1822

proclaimed himself Augustin the First, _Emperor_ of Mexico.

But he instantly committed the capital fault of quarrelling with his

congress. By a rash policy he dissolved the assembly and appointed

another, composed of his adherents. But Cromwell’s boldness required

Cromwell’s abilities to sustain it. The army had been the actual givers

of the throne, and what they had given they regarded themselves as

having the right to resume. The generals revolted against Iturbide,

overthrew him, proclaimed a new constitution, and sent him to travel in

Europe on a pension!

The constitution thus formed (October 1824) was republican, and took

for its model that of the United States. Its two assemblies are a

senate and a house of representatives. The senate consisting of two

members for each state; the representatives, of two for every eighty

thousand inhabitants. All must be natives, and have landed property

to the amount of eight thousand dollars, or some trade or profession

which brings in ten thousand dollars annually. The congress sits every

year from the first of January to the middle of April. The senators

holding their seats for four years, generally; the representatives

for two. The executive is vested in a president and vice-president,

both elected by the state legislatures for four years. The ages of the

several functionaries are curiously fixed. The representative must

have attained the age of twenty-five, the senator of thirty, and the

high officers of state thirty-five.[A] The whole territory forms one

“Federal Republic, governed by one Executive,” a marked distinction

between Mexico and its model; the several states of the American Union

retaining to themselves many of the privileges which, in the Mexican,

belong to the government of the capital.

[A] There have been some subsequent changes in these matters.

Iturbide, after a two years’ exile, whether uneasy in his fall, or

tempted by the perpetual tumults of party at home, returned to Mexico

in 1824. He was said to complain of the stoppage of his pension; but,

before his arrival, a party especially hostile to him had obtained

power, and Iturbide, with a rashness which exhibits the true Creole,

landing, without making the natural inquiry into the actual condition

of things, was instantly seized and shot. Santa Anna, who had

distinguished himself in the military service, now appealed to the

usual donor of power, the army, and, at the head of his squadrons, took

possession of the Presidentship.

In the present confusion of Mexican affairs, the recollection of Santa

Anna has been frequently brought before the mind of his nation, as the

only man fit to sustain it under the difficulties of the crisis; and

nothing can be more fully acknowledged, than that, among the successive

leaders of the country, he has had no rival in point of decision,

intelligence, and intrepidity, the qualities obviously most essential

for the time.

Santa Anna, in 1823, was unknown; he was simply a colonel in the

Mexican service. The declaration of public opinion in that year for

Republicanism, found him a zealous convert; and at the head of his

regiment he marched from Vera Cruz to meet the troops of Iturbide. He

met the Emperor’s general, Echavari, half-way to the capital, and,

after some trivial encounters, made a convert of his enemy; Echavari’s

battalions marched into Santa Anna’s camp. Iturbide, thus suddenly

stript of his troops, had no alternative but to capitulate, and go into

banishment. The Republic was proclaimed, and Santa Anna was recognised

as the deliverer of his country. But an occasion occurred in which his

military talents were to be equally conspicuous.

In 1829, a Spanish armament, with four thousand troops under General

Barrados, made its appearance off Tampico, dispatched to recover the

country for the Spanish crown. This instance of activity on the part

of Old Spain was so unexpected, that the Republic was in general

consternation. But Santa Anna took his measures with equal intelligence

and bravery. Collecting about seven hundred men hastily, crossing the

Gulf in open boats, and evading the Spanish vessels of war, he landed

within a few miles of the Spanish expedition. Barrados, unprepared for

this dashing antagonist, had gone on some rash excursion, carrying

with him three-fourths of his force; the remaining thousand were the

garrison of Tampico. Santa Anna, losing no time, assaulted the place

next morning, and after a four hours’ struggle, made the whole garrison

prisoners. But his victory had placed him in imminent danger. Barrados

rapidly returned; the Mexican general, encumbered with prisoners,

found himself in presence of triple his numbers, and with a river in

his rear. Death, or surrender, seemed the only alternatives. In this

emergency, he dexterously proposed an armistice, impressing the Spanish

general with the idea that he was at the head of an overwhelming

force--an impression the more easily made, from the apparent hardihood

of his venturing so near an army of Spanish veterans. One of his first

conditions was, that the Mexican troops should return to their own

quarters unmolested. Thus, with merely six hundred men, he escaped from

five times that number. In a few days he was joined by several hundred

men. He then commenced a vigorous and incessant attack on the Spanish

position, which was followed by the surrender of the entire corps; and

2200 Spaniards were embarked for the Havannah as prisoners of war.

Santa Anna’s force never exceeding 1500 men.

A campaign of this rank naturally placed him in a distinguished point

of public view. Yet he remained in comparative quiet on his estates

near Vera Cruz, probably on the Napoleon principle--waiting his

opportunity. It soon came; in 1841, Bustamente, the president, fell

into unpopularity; murmurs rose ominously among the troops, and Santa

Anna was summoned to head a revolution. Gathering five or six hundred

men, chiefly raw recruits, he marched on the capital. The enterprise

was singularly adventurous, for Bustamente was an experienced officer,

with 8000 men under his immediate command. Santa Anna again tried

the effect of diplomacy; the result was, that Bustamente finally

surrendered both his power and his place, and was shortly after sent

into exile.

Santa Anna now governed the country as dictator. His administration

had the rashness, but the honesty, of his Spanish origin; and Mexico,

relieved from the encumbrances of her Spanish dependence, was beginning

to enjoy the riches of her unparalleled climate and boundless

fertility, when a new enemy arose in Texas--the American settlers,

who, in the spirit of cosmopolitism, had been universally suffered to

enter the Mexican territories as inhabitants. The result was, that

they began to clamour for provincial independence. The natives were

generally tranquil; but the new-comers intrigued, harangued, and

demanded a direct alliance with the United States. The struggle has

been too recent to require recital. Santa Anna, with the rashness which

characterises his courage, rushed into this war with troops evidently

unprepared. After various skirmishes, in which the settlers suffered

severely, his undisciplined force was routed, and Santa Anna, left

alone in the field, was made prisoner in the attempt to escape. The

“Independence” of Texas followed, which was quickly exchanged for

the “Annexation” to the United States, by which its independence was

extinguished.

The “Annexation” was immediately pronounced by the Mexican government

to be a breach of that treaty by which the neighbour States were

pledged to respect the possessions of each other; and the invasion of

Mexico by an American army was the consequence. The Mexican force on

the frontier was obviously too feeble for any effective resistance; and

the American general, after some delays of movement, and divisions of

his forces, which one active officer on the defensive would have turned

to his ruin, attacked the Mexicans, drove them from their position, and

took their guns. Since that period the advance of the Americans seems

to have been checked by the difficulties of the country. Whether it is

the intention of the American commander to fight, or to negotiate, to

make a dash for the capital, or to treat for California, must be left

to be discovered by events. But Paredes, the present head of the state,

and commander of the troops, has the reputation of a brave officer,

and Santa Anna is strongly spoken of as the man whom the nation would

gladly summon to the redemption of his country.

But Mexico has one fatal feature which makes the mind despair of her

ever holding the rank of a great nation. However glaring may be the

superstition of continental Europe, it is of a feeble hue to the

extravagance of Mexican ceremonial. In those remote countries, once

guarded under the Spanish government with the most jealous vigilance

from the stranger’s eye, every ceremonial was gradually adopted, of

every shape and colour, which the deepest superstition, aided by great

wealth, the influence of a powerful hierarchy, and the zeal of a

people at once desperately ignorant and singularly fond of show, could

invent. Rome, and even Naples, were moderate, compared with Mexico. The

conveyance of the Host to the sick was almost a public pageant; its

carriage to the wife of Santa Anna was accompanied by twenty thousand

people. The feast of Corpus Christi exhibits streets through which

thirty or forty thousand people pour along, of all classes of society,

with thousands of soldiery, to swell and give military brilliancy to

the display. At the head of the pageant moves a platform, on which the

wafer is borne by the highest dignitaries of the church. Then follows,

in a similar vehicle, “Our Lady of the Remedies,” the blessed Virgin

Mother, a little alabaster doll, with the nose broken and an eye out.

This was the image of herself given by the Virgin to Cortes to revive

the valour of his soldiers after their Mexican defeat; and this the

priests profess to believe, and the populace actually do believe. The

doll’s wardrobe, with its precious stones, is valued at a million of

dollars. The doll stops all contagious diseases, and is remarkably

active in times of cholera.

Some of the popular exhibitions on Scriptural subjects are actually

too startling to be described to Christian ears. Among those is the

exhibition of the Nativity, as the especial display of Christmas eve.

Joseph enters Bethlehem with Mary; they are sitting on the same mule;

they search the city for lodgings in vain. At last they find the

stable. The rest of the exhibition, a part of which, however, passes

behind a curtain, is indescribable. And all this is done with the

highest approbation of the ecclesiastical authorities.

The anniversary of the “Miracle” of the “Virgin of Guadaloupe,” is

one of the “grand days” of the Federal Republic. The president, the

cabinet, the archbishop, and all the principal functionaries of the

state, are present, with an immense multitude of every class. A member

of Congress delivers an oration on the subject; and the Virgin and her

story are no more doubted than the history of Magna Charta. The story

thus blazoned, and thus believed, is briefly this:--

An Indian, going to Mexico one morning in the sixteenth century, saw a

female form descending from the sky. He was frightened; but the female

told him that she was the Virgin Mary, come down to be the patron of

the Mexican Indians, and ordered him to announce to the bishop that

a church must be built in the mountain where she met him. The Indian

flew to the bishop, but the prelate drove him away. The next day he met

the Virgin on the same spot, and she appointed a day to convince the

sceptical ecclesiastic. She bid him go to the summit of the mountain,

where he should find the rock covered with roses for the first time

since the Creation. He carried the roses in his apron to the bishop,

when, lo! he found that on his apron was stamped a figure of the

Virgin in a cloak of velvet spangled with stars of gold! Her proof was

irresistible, and the church was built. The original portrait is still

displayed there, in a golden frame studded with precious stones, with

the motto, _Non fecit taliter omni nationi_. (He hath not so done to

every nation; or, more significantly, to _any other_ nation.) Copies

of the miraculous picture, of more or less costliness, are to be found

in almost every house, and all have the full homage of saintship. The

Church of the Virgin, though not so large as the Cathedral, is of a

finer style, and nearly as rich; the balustrade is pure silver, and all

the candelabra, &c., are of the precious metals.

The idleness and the low class of life from which the majority of the

monks and friars are taken, make celibacy especially dangerous to

the community. The higher orders of the priesthood are comparatively

decorous; but many of them have these suspicious appendages to

a priest’s household, which are called “house-keepers,” with a

proportionate share of those equally suspicious appendages, which are

popularly called “nephews and nieces,” the whole system being one which

furnishes a large portion of the gossip of Mexican society. But on

those topics we have no wish to dwell.

Whether the American invasion will succeed in reaching Mexico, or in

obtaining Upper California, or in breaking up the Federation, are

matters still in the future. The disruption of the Federation seems to

have been already, and spontaneously begun; Yucatan is said to have

demanded independence; and the northern provinces bordering on the

United States will, in all probability, soon make the same demand. It

is obvious that the present Mexican territory is too large for the

varying, distracted, and feeble government which Mexico has exhibited

for the last quarter of a century--a territory seven times the size of

France, or perhaps ten times that size, can be governed by a central

capital only so long as the population continues scanty, powerless, and

poor. But if Mexico had a population proportionate to France, and there

is no reason for doubting its capacity of supporting such a population,

the capital would govern a territory containing little less than three

hundred millions of men; an obvious impossibility, where those men

were active, opulent, intelligent, and engaged in traffic with the

world. The example of the Chinese population is _not_ a contrary case.

There the empire was old, the throne almost sacred, the imperial power

supported by a large military establishment, the character of the

people timid, and the country in a state of mental stagnation. Yet,

even for China, great changes may be at hand.

But the whole subject is to be looked on in a more comprehensive

point of view. There _is_ a general shaking of nations. The Turk, the

Egyptian, the African, and the Chinese, have all experienced an impulse

within late years, which has powerfully influenced their whole system.

That impulse is now going westward. The immense regions beyond the

Atlantic are now commencing the second stage of that existence, of

which their discovery by Europe was the first. The language, the habits

and history, the political feelings of England, are becoming familiar

to them. They have begun their national education in the great school

of self-government, with England for their teacher; and however tardy

may be the pupilage, or however severe the events which turn the theory

into example, we have strong faith in the conception, that all things

will finally work together for good, and that a spirit of regeneration

is already sent forth on its mighty mission to the New World as to the

Old, to the “bond as to the free;” to those whom misgovernment has

enfeebled, and superstition has debased, as to those who, possessing

the original advantages of civilisation and religion, have struggled

their difficult way to increasing knowledge, truth, and freedom, and

whose progress has alike conferred on them the power, and laid upon

them the duty, of being the moral leaders of Mankind.

A SUMMER DAY.

BY THOMAS AIRD.

MORNING.

Dear little Isle of ours! your very clouds,

Ranged in the east and battlemented black,

White flock of zenith, or, with stormy glory,

Tumbling tumultuous o’er the western hills,

Lend power and beauty to your pictured face,

Relieved and deepened in its light and shade,

Varied of dale and mountain, pleasing still

Through all the seasons, as they come and go,--

Blue airy Summer, Autumn brown and grave,

Gnarled sapless Winter, and clear glinting Spring.

Mine be the cottage, large enough for use,

Yet fully occupied, and cheerful thus.

Desolate he who, with his means abridged,

And wants reduced, yet pride of property

Still unimpaired, dwells in a narrow flank;

Of his ancestral house, gloomily vast

Beyond his need,--dwells with the faded ghost

Of former greatness. There the bellied spider,

That works in cool and silent palaces,

Has halls his own. The labyrinthine rooms

Seem haunted all. Mysterious laden airs

Move the dim tapestries drearily. And shapes

Spectral at hollow midnight beckoning glide

Down the far corridors, and faint away.

Up with the summer sun! Earlier at times,

And see gray brindled dawn come up before him;

There’s natural health, there’s moral healing in

The hour so naked clear, so dewy cool!

But oft I wish a chamber in the black

Castle of Indolence, far in, where spark

Of prying light ne’er comes, nor sound of cock

Is heard, nor the long howl of houseless cur,

Nor clock, nor shrill-winged gnat, nor buzzing fly

That, by the snoring member undeterred,

Aye settles on your nose’s tickled tip

Tormentingly. Deep in that charmèd rest

Laid, I could sleep the weary world away,

Months at a time--so listless fancy thinks.

Oh! curse of sleeplessness! Haggard and pale,

The tyrant Nero, see him from his bed

Wandering about, haunting the long dim halls,

And silent stairs, at midnight, startled oft

At his own footsteps, like a guilty thing

Sharp turning round aghast. The palace sleeps,

And all the city sleeps, all save its lord.

Then looks he to the windows of the east,

Wearily watching for the morning light,

That comes not at his will. Down on his bed

He flings himself again. His eyeballs ache;

His temples throb; his pillow’s hot and hard;

And through his dried brain thoughts and feelings drift,

Tumultuous, unrestrained, carrying his soul

On the high fever’s surge. The imperial world

For one short dewy hour of healing sleep!

Worlds cannot buy the blessing. Up he reels,

And staggers forth. Slow-coming day at length

Has found him thus. Its living busy forms,

Its turms, its senators, its gorgeous guests,

Bowing in homage from barbaric isles,

Its scenes, its duties are to him a strange

Phantasmagoria: Through its ghastly light

Wildered he lives. To feel and be assured

He yet has hold on being, with the drugs

Of monstrous pleasures, cruelty and lust,

He drugs his spirit; ever longing still

For the soft hour of eve, if sleep may come

After another day has worn him out.

But images of black, bed-fellows strange,

Lie down with him; drawing his curtain back,

Unearthly shapes, and unimagined faces,

Look in upon him, near down on his eyes,

Nearer and nearer still, till they are forced

To wink beneath the infliction, like a weight

Of actual pressure, solid, heavy, felt.

But winking hard, a thousand coloured motes

Begin to dance confused, and central stars,

And spots of light, welling and widening out

In rings concentric, peopling all the blind

Black vacancy before his burning balls.

But soon they change to leering antic shapes,

And dread-suggesting fiends. Dim, far away,

Long dripping corpses, swaying in the waves,

Slowly cast up, arise; gashed, gory throats,

And headless trunks of men, are nearer seen,

And every form of tragic butchery--

The myriad victims of his power abused

By sea and land. To give their hideousness

Due light, a ceiling of clear molten fire,

Figured with sprawling imps, begins to glow

Hot overhead, casting a brazen light

Down on the murdered crew. All bent on him,

Near, nearer still, they swarm, they crowd, they press;

And round and round, and through and through the rout,

The naked Pleasures, knit with demons, dance.

Wild whirls his brain anew. This night is as

The last, and far more terrible. Guilt thus,

And sleeplessness, more than perpetuate

Each other--dreadful lineage! Let us hope,

For human nature, that the man was mad.

Up from your blameless sleep, go forth and meet

The glistening morn, over the smoking lawn

Spangled, by briery balks, and brambled lanes,

Where blows the dog-rose, and the honey-suckle

Hangs o’er the heavy hedge its trailing sheaf

Of stems and leaves, tendrils and clasping rings,

Cold dews, and bugle blooms, and honey smells,

And wild bees swinging as they murmur there.

The speckled thrush, startled from off the thorn,

Shakes down the crystal drops. With spurring haste,

The rabbit scuds across the grassy path;

Pauses a moment--with its form and ears

Arrect to listen; then, with glimpse of white,

Springs through the hedge into the ferny brake.

Or taste the freshness of the pastoral hills

On such a morn: Light scarfs of thinning mist

In graceful lingerings round their shoulders hang;

New-washed and white, the sheep go nibbling up

The high green slopes; a hundred gurgling rills,

Sparkling with foam-bells, to your very heart

Send their delicious coolness; hark! again,

The cuckoo somewhere in the sunny skirts

Of yonder patch of the old natural woods;

With sudden iron croak, clear o’er the gray

Summit, o’erhanging you, with levell’d flight,

The raven shoots into the deep blue air.

Lo! in the confluence of the mountain glens,

The small gray ruin of an ancient kirk.

’Twas the first kirk, so faithful reverence tells,

Of Scotland’s Reformation: And it drew,

Now as before, from all the hills around

The worshippers; till, in a richer vale,

To suit the populous hamlet rising there,

A larger, nearer parish church was built.

Thus was the old one left. But there it stands,

And there will stand till the slow tooth of Time

Nibble it all away; for it is fenced

Completely round, not with just awe alone,

But superstitious fears, the abuse of awe

In simple minds: Strange judgments, so they say,

Have fallen on those who once or twice have dared

To lay their hands upon its holy stones

For secular uses, and remove its bell.

With such excess of love--we’ll blame it not--

Does Scotland love her Church. Be it so still

And be its emblem still the Burning Bush!

Bush of the wilderness! See how the flames

Bicker and burn around it; but a low

Soft breath of the great Spirit of Salvation

Blows gracious by, and the dear little Bush,

The desert Bush, in every freshened leaf

Uncurled, unsinged in every flowery bud,

Fragrant with heavenly dews, and dropping balsams

Good for the hurt soul’s healing, waves and rustles,

Even in the very heart of the red burning,

In livelier green and fairer blossoming.

Earth sends her soft warm incense up to heaven;

The birds their matins sing. Joining the hymn,

The tremulous voice of psalms from human lips

Is heard in the free air. You wonder where,

And who the worshippers. Behold them now,

Down in the grassy hollow lowly seated,

Close by the mountain burn--an old gray man,

His head uncovered, and the Book of life

Spread on his knee, a female by his side,

His aged wife, both beggars by their garb,

With frail cracked voices, yet with hearts attuned

To the immortal harmonies of faith,

And hope, and love, in the green wilderness

Praising the Lord their God--a touching sight!

High in the Heavenly House not made with hands,

The archangels sing, angels, and saints in white,

Striking their golden harps before the Throne;

But, in the pauses of the symphony

A voice comes up from Earth, the simple psalm

Of those old beggars, heard by the Ear of God

With more acceptance than hosannahs sung

In blissful jubilee. ’Tis hard to think

The people of the Lord must beg their bread;

Yet happy they who, poor as this old twain

On earth, like them, have laid fast titled hold

Upon the treasures of Eternity!

Her nest is here: But ah! the cunning thing,

See where our White-throat, like the partridge, feigns

A broken wing, thick fluttering o’er the ground,

And tumbling oft, to draw you from her brood

Within the bush. Now that’s a lie, my birdie!

Your wing’s not broken; but we’ll grant you this,--

The lie’s a white one, white as your own throat.

Yet how should He who is the Truth itself,

And whose unquestioned prompting instinct is,

Implant deceit within your little breast,

And make you act it, even to save your young?

The whole creation groans for man, for sin,

And death its consequence: We’re changed to you

In our relations, birdie; as a part

Of that primeval ill, we rob your nest.

To meet this change, and in God’s own permission

Of moral wrong, was it, that guile was given

Even to the truest instinct of your love;

And your deceit is our reflected sin?

Subtle philosopher, or sound divine,

’Tis a grave question; can you answer it?

The more we wonder at the curious warp

From truth, the more we see the o’erruling law

Of natural love in all things, which will be

A fraud in instinct, rather than a flaw

In care parental. Oh! how gracious good,

That all the generations, as they rise,

Of living things are not sustained by one

Great abstract fiat of Benevolence;

But by a thousand separate forms of love,

All tremblingly alive: The human heart,

With all its conduits and its channel-pipes,

Warm, flowing, full, quiveringly keen and strong

In all its tendrils and its bloody threads,

Laying hold of its children with the fast

Bands of a man; fish, bird, beast, reptile, insect,

The wallowing, belching monsters of the deep,

Down to the filmiest people of the leaf,

Are all God’s nurses, and draw out the breast,

Or brood for Him. Oh! what a system thus

Of active love, of every shape and kind,

Has been created, from the Heart of Heaven

Extended, multiplied, personified

In living forms throughout the Universe!

In life’s first glee, and first untutored grace,

With raven tresses, and with glancing eyes,

How beautiful those children, lustrous dark,

Pulling the kingcups in the flowery meadow!

Born of an Indian Mother: She by night,

An orphan damsel on her native hills,

Looked down the Khyber Pass, with pity touched

For the brave strangers that lay slain in heaps,

Low in that fatal fold and pen of death.

Sorrow had taught her mercy: Forth she went

With simple cordials from her lonely cot,

If she might help to save some wounded foe.

By cavern went she, and tall ice-glazed rock,

Casting its spectral shadow on the snow,

Beneath the hard blue moon. Save her own feet

Crushing the starry spangles of the frost,

Sound there was none on all the silent hills;

And silence filled the valley of the dead.

Down went the maid aslant. A cliff’s recess

Gave forth a living form. A wounded youth,

One unit relic of that thick battue,

Escaping death, and mastering his deep hurt,

From out the bloody Pass had climbed thus far

The mountain side, and rested there a while.

The virgin near, up rose he heavily,

Staggered into the light, and stood before her,

Bowing for help. She gave him sweet-spiced milk,

And led him to her home, and hid him there

Months, till pursuit was o’er, and he was healed,

And from her mountains he could safely go.

But grateful Walter loved the Affghan girl,

And would not go without her: They had taught

Each other language: Will she go with him

To the Isles of the West, and be his wife?

Nor less she loved the fair-haired islander,

And softly answered, Yes. And she is now

His Christian wife, wondering and loving much

In this mild land, honoured and loved of all;

With such a grace of glad humility

She does her duties. And, to crown her joy

Of holy wedded life, her God has given her

Those beauteous children, with the laughing voices,

Pulling the kingcups in the flowery meadow.

Our walk is o’er. But let us see our bees,

Before we turn into our ivied porch.

The little honey-folk, how wise are they!

Their polity, their industry, their work,

The help they take from man, and what they give him

Of fragrant nectar, sea-green, clear, and sweet,

Invest them almost with the dignity

Of human neighbourhood, without the intrusion.

Coming and going, what a hum and stir!

The dewy morn they love, the sunny day,

With showery dropping balms, liquoring the flowers

In every vein and eye. But when the heavens

Grow cloudy, and the quick-engendered blasts

Darken and whiten as they skiff along

The mountain-tops, till all the nearer air,

Seized with the gloom, is turbid, dense, and cold,

Back from their far-off foraging the bees,

In myriads, saddened into small black motes,

Strike through the troubled air, sharp past your head,

And almost hitting you, their lines of flight

Converging, thickening, as they draw near home;

So much they fear the storms, so much they love

The safety of their straw-built citadels.

NOON.

At times a bird slides through the glossy air,

O’er the enamelled woodlands; but no chirp

Of song is heard: All’s dumb and panting heat.

How waste and idle are yon river sands,

Far-stretching white! The stream is almost shrunk

Down to the green gleet of its slippery stones;

And in it stand the cows, switching their tails,

With circling drops, and ruminating slow.

A hermit glutton on a sodded root,

Fish-gorged, his head and bill sunk to his breast,

The lean blue heron stands, and there will stand

Motionless all the long dull afternoon.

But the old woods are near, with grateful glooms,

Dells, silent grottoes, and cold sunken wells;

There rest on mossy seats, and be refreshed:

Thankful you toil not, at this blazing hour,

Beneath the dog-star, in some sandy lane

Of the strait sea-coast town, pent closely in

With walls of fiery brick, their tops stuck o’er

With broken pointed glass, and danders hot

Fencing their feet, with sparse ears of wild barley

Parched, dun, and dead amongst them; o’er your head

The smoke of potteries, and the foundry vent

Sending its quivering exhalation up--

Heat more than smoke; to aggravate the whole,

The sweltering, smothering, suffocating whole,

The oppressive sense upon your heart of man’s

Worst dwellings round you--smells of stinking fish,

Torn dingy shirts, half washed, flea-spotted still,

Hung out on bending strings at broken windows;

Hunger, and fear, and pale disordered faces,

Lies, drunken strife, strokes, cries, and new-coined oaths,

All hot and rough from the red mint of hell.

Lo! with her screwed tail cocked aloft in air,

The cottar’s cow comes scampering clumsily.

Her, sorely cupped and leeched, the clegs have stung

From her propriety; and hoisting high

Her standard of distress, this way she comes

Cantering unwieldily, her heavy udder,

Dropping out milk, swinging from side to side.

Pathetic sight! So long have we been used

To see the solemn tenor of her life,

From calfhood to her present reverend age

Of wrinkled front, scored horns, and hollow back,--

Tenor unbroken, save when once or twice

A pool of frothy blood before the smithy

Has made her snuff, snort, paw, and toss her head,

Wheel round and round, and slavering bellow mad:

That blood the cadger’s horse, seized with the bots,

When he on cobwebbed clover, raw and cold,

Had supped, gave spouting, spinning from his neck,

Beneath the blacksmith’s mallet and his fleam.

Is this the cow, at home so patient o’er

The cool sobriety of cabbage leaves,

Hoarse cropped for her at morn, when the night-drops

Lie like big diamonds in the freshened stock,--

Drops broken, running, scattered, but again

Conglobed like quicksilver, until they fall

Shaken to earth? Is this the milky mother,

That long has given to thankful squeezing hands,

With such an air of steady usefulness,

The children’s streaming food--twelve pints a day;

And with her butter, and her cheese, and cans

Of white-green whey, has bought the grocery goods,

Snuff and tobacco? Oh! the affecting sight!

Help, help, ye Shades, the venerable brute!

But gradually subsiding to a trot,

She takes the river with a fellow-feeling,

And, modestly aloof to raise no strife,

There settles down behind the stranger cows.

Ah! Crummie, you have stolen this scampering march

Upon the little cow-herd. Far are heard

The opening roarings of his wondering fear,

Nearer and nearer still, as they come on,

Loading the noontide air. Three other friends

Had he to feed, besides the family cow.

Twin cushats young, the yellow hair now sparse

In their thick gathering plumage, nestling lie

Within his bonnet; they can snap, and strike

With raised wing; grown vigorous thus, they need

A larger dinner of provided peas.

Nor less his hawk, shrill-screaming as it shakes

Its wings for food, must have the knotted worms

From moist cold beds below the unwholesome stone,

That never has been raised--if he be quick

To raise it, and can seize them ere they slink

Into their holes, or, when half in, can draw them,

With a long, steady, gentle, equal pull,

Tenacious though they be, and tender stretched

Till every rib seems ready to give way,

Unbroken out in all their slippery length.

These now he wandered seeking, for the ground

Was parched, and they the surface all had left;

And many a stone he raised, but nothing saw,

Save insect eggs, and shells of beetles’ wings,

Slaters, cocoons, and yellow centipedes.

Thus was he drawn away. When he came back,

His cow was gone. Dismayed, he looked all round.

At last he saw, far-off on the horizon,

Her hoisted tail. He seized his birds and ran,

Following the tail, and as he ran he roared.

Yonder he comes in view with red-hot face;

Roaring the more to see old Crummie take

The river--how shall he dislodge her thence;

And get her home again? Oh! deep distress!

The world is flooded with the dazzling day.

We take the woods. Couched in the checkered skirts,

Below an elm we lie. A sylvan stream

Is sleeping by us in a cold still pool,

Within whose glassy depth the little fishes

Hang, as in crystal air. Freckled with gleams,

’Neath yonder hazelly bank that roofs it o’er

With roots and moss, it slides and slips away.

Here a ray’d spot of light, intensely clear,

Strikes our eyes through the leaves; a sunbeam there

Comes slanting in between the mossy trunks

Of the green trees, and misty shimmering falls

With a long slope down on the glossy ferns:

Light filmy flies athwart it brightening shoot,

Or dance and hover in the motty ray.

We love the umbrageous Elm. Its well-crimp’d leaf,

Serrated, fresh, and rough as a cow’s tongue,

Is healthy, natural, and cooling, far

Beyond the glazy polish of the bay,

Famed though it be, but glittering hard as if

’Twere liquor’d o’er with some metallic wash.

Thus pleased, laid back, up through the Elm o’erhead

We look. The little Creeper of the Tree

Lends life to it: See how the antic bird,

Her bosom to the bark, goes round away

Behind the trunk, but quaintly reappears

Through a rough cleft above, with busy bill

Picking her lunch; and now among the leaves

Our birdie goes, bright glimmering in the green

And yellow light that fills the tender tree.

Low o’er the burnie bends the drooping Birch:

Fair tree! Though oft its cuticle of bark

Hangs in white fluttering tatters on its breast,

No fairer twinkles in the dewy glade.

Sweet is its scented breath, the wild deer loves it,

And snuffs and browses at the budding spray.

But far more tempting to the truant’s eyes,

Wandering the woods, its thick excrescences

Of bundled matted sprigs: Soft steals he on,

To find what seems afar the cushat’s nest,

Or pie’s or crow’s. Deceived, yet if the tree

Is old, he seeks in its decaying clefts

The fungous cork-wood that gives balls to boys,

And smooth-skinn’d razor-strops to bearded men.

Bent all on play, our little urchin next

Peels off a bit of bark, and with his nails

Splits and divides the many-coated rind

To the last outer thinness; then he holds

The silky shivering film between his lips,

And pipes and whistles, mimicking the thrush.

Nor less the Beauty of our natural woods

Is useful too. What time the housewife’s pirn

(Oh, cheerless change that stopp’d the birring wheel!)

Whirled glimmering round before the evening fire,

’Twas birchen aye. And when our tough-heel’d shoes

Have stood the tear and wear of stony hills

Beyond our hope, we bless the birchen pegs.

In Norway o’er the foam, their crackling fires

Are fed with bark of birch, and there they thatch

Their simple houses with its pliant twigs.

At home, the virtues of our civic besoms

Confess the birch. The Master of the School

Is now “abroad:” Oh! may he never miss,

Wander where’er he will, the birchen shaw,

But cut the immemorial ferula,

To lay in pickle for rebellious imps,

And discipline to worth the British youth.

The Queen can make a Duke; but cannot make

One of the forest’s old Aristocrats.

Behold yon Oak! What glory in his bole,

His boughs, his branches, his broad frondent head!

The ancient Nobleman! Not She who rules

The kingdoms, many-isled, on which the sun

Never goes down, with all the investiture

Of garters, coronets, scutcheons, swords, and stars,

Could make him there at once. Patrician! Nay,

King of the woods, his independent realm!

Whate’er his titled name, there let him stand,

Fit emblem of our British constitution,

Full constituted in the rooted Past,

With powers, and forces, and accommodations,

The growth of ages, not an act or work!

Beyond this emblem of old diguity,

And far beyond the associated thought

Of “Hearts of Oak,” that mightiest incarnation

Of human power that earth has ever seen--

As when we launch’d our Nelson, and he went

Thundering around the world, driving the foe,

With all their banded hosts, from hemisphere

To hemisphere, before him, by the terror

Of his tremendous name, but overtook

And thunder-smote them down, swept from the seas,--

Beyond all this, the reverend Oak takes back

The heart to elder days of holy awe.

Such oaks are they, the hoariest of the race,

Round Lochwood Tower, the Johnstones’ ancient seat.

Bow’d down with very age, and rough all o’er

With scurfy moss, and the depending hair

Of parasitic plants, (the mistletoe,

Be sure, is there, congenial friend of old,)

They look as if no lively little bird

Durst hop upon their spirit-awing heads:

Perhaps, at midnight hour, Minerva’s bird,

The grave, staid owl, may rest a moment there.

But solemn visions swarm on every bough,

Of Druid doings in old dusky time.

When lowers the thunder cloud, and all the trees

Stand black and still, with what a trump profound

The wild bee wanders by! But here he is,

Hoarse murmuring in the fox-glove’s weigh’d-down bell.

Happy in sumner he! but when the days

Of later autumn come, they’ll find him hanging

In torpid stupor, on the horse-knot’s top;

Or by the ragweed in the school-boy’s hand,

As forth he issues, angry from his bike,

Struck down, he’ll die--what time the urchins, bent

On honey, delve into the solid ground:

They seize the yellower and the cleaner comb,

But drop it quick, when squeezing it they find

Nought there but milky maggots; then they pick

The darker bits, and suck them, though they be

Wild, bitter flavoured, in their luscious strength,

And dirty brown, and mix’d with earthen mould.

The luckier mower in the grassy mead,

Turns up with his scythe’s point, or with its edge,

The foggie’s bike, a ball of soft, dry fog.

With what a sharp, thin, acrid, pent-up buzz,

Swarming, it lives and stirs! But when the bees

Are all dislodged, and, circling, wheel away,

The swain rejoices in that bright clean honey.

Ah! there’s Miss Kitty Wren, with her cocked tail,

Cocked like a cooper’s thumb. Miss Kitty goes

In ’neath the bank, and then comes out again

By some queer hole. Thus, all the day she plies

Her quest from hedge to bank, scarce ever seen

Flying above your head in open air.

Unsmitten by the heat where now she is,

She strikes into her song--Miss Kitty’s song!

(We never think of male in Kitty’s case.)

The song is short, and varies not, but yet

’Tis not monotonous; with such a pipe

Of liquid clearness does she open it,

And, with increasing vigour, to the end

Go through it quite: Thus, all the year, she sings,

Except in frost, the spunky little bird!

On mossy stump of thorn, her curious nest

Is often built, a twig drawn over it,

To bind it firm; but more she loves the roof

Of sylvan cave over-arched, where the green twilight

Glimmers with golden light, and fox-gloves stand,

Tall, purple-faced, her goodly beef-eaters,

To guard and dignify her entrance-gate.

The ballad vouches that a wee, wee bird

Oft brings a whispered message to the ear;

So here’s our ear, Miss Wren, (your pardon! we

Must call you Mrs now,) pray, tell us how

You manage, in your crowded little house,

To feed your thirteen young, nor miss one mouth

In its due turn, but give them all fair play?

And here’s our other ear; say, ere you go,

What means the Bachelor’s Nest? ’Tis oftener found

Than the true finished one. Externally,

’Tis built as well; but ne’er we find within

The cozy feathery lining for the home

Of love parental. Is it, as some think,

And as the name, though not precise, implies,

Made for your husband, whosoe’er he be,

To sleep o’nights in? Or, as others deem,

Is it a lure to draw the loiterer’s eye

Off from the genuine nest, not far away?

Or, shy and nice, were you disturbed in building;

Or by some other instinct, fine and true,

Impelled to change your first-projected place,

And choose a safer? This your Laureate holds.

But here comes Robin. In our boyish days,

We thought him Kitty’s husband. By his clear

Black eye, he’s fit to answer for himself.

Like her, he sings the whole year round; but she

Is not his wife. See how he turns the head

This way and that, peeping from out the leaves

With curious eye, and still comes hopping nearer.

Strong in his individual character,

His knowing glance, his shape, his waistcoat red,

His pipe mellifluous, and pugnacious pride,

Darting to strike intruders from his beat,

And other qualities, his love of man

Is still his great peculiarity.

The starved hedge-sparrow haunts the moistened sink,

On gurly winter days, the bitter wind

Ruffling her back, showing the bluer down

Beneath her feathers freckled brown above,

But ne’er she ventures nearer where man dwells.

With sidelong look, bold Robin takes our floor;

And when, as now, we rest us in the depths

Of leafy woods, he’s with us in a trice.

Such is the genius of red-breasted Robin.

Along the shingly shallows of the burn,

The smallest bird that walks, and does not hop,

How fast yon Wagtail runs; its little feet

Quick as a mouse’s! Thus its shaking tail

Is kept in even balance, poised and straight.

With hopping movements ’twould not harmonise,

But, wagging inconveniently more,

Mar and confound the bird’s progressive way,

When off the wing. Wisdom Divine contrived

The just proportions of this compromise

Betwixt the motions of the feet and tail.

Aloft in air, each chirrup keeping time

With each successive undulation long,

The Wagtail flies, a pleasant summer bird.

A moment on the elm above our head

Rests the Green-linnet. Wordsworth says, He “from

The cottage-eaves pours forth his song in gushes.”

Not so in Scotland: Here he sometimes builds

His nest within the garden’s beechen hedge;

But never haunts our eaves. As for his song,

A few short notes, meagre and harsh, are all

This somewhat spiritless and lumpish bird

Has ever given us. Can the Master err?

With all the short thick rowing of her wings

The Magpie makes slow way. But her glib tongue

Goes chattering fast enough. In yonder fir,

The summer solstice cannnot keep her mute.

Surely, the bird should speak: Take the young pie,

And with a silver sixpence split its tongue,

’Twill speak incontinent; thus the notion runs

From simple father down to simple son,

In many parts. Oft in our boyhood’s days

We’ve seen it tried; but somehow, by bad luck,

It always happened that the poor bird died,

When, doubtless, just upon the eve of speech.

Sore was the splitting then, but far worse now:

The sixpence then, worn till it lost the head

Of George the Third, was thin as a knife’s edge,

And fitly sharp; the coin’s now thick and dull,

And makes the clumsier cleaving full of pain.

As boys we feared the magpie, for ’twas held

A bird of omen: oft ’twas seen to tear

With mad extravagant bill the cottage thatch,

Herald of death within: To neighbouring towns

The schoolboy, sent on morning messages,

Counted with awe how many pies at once

Hopped on his road; by this he learned to know

The various fortunes of the coming time.

Sweet lore was yours, O Bewick! with that eye

So keen, yet quiet, for the Beautiful,

And for the Droll--that eye so loving large!

Yet sweeter, Wilson, yours, as yours a range

More ample far, watching the goings-on

Of Nature in the boundless solitudes.

We know no happier man than him, at once,

With native powers, fixed from a restless youth,

To a great work congenial, which his might

Of conscious will has mastered ere begun;

Life’s work, and the foundation of his fame:

But oh! its sweetness, if in Nature’s eye

His is the privilege to work it out!

Such was the work of Wilson. Happy, too,

Is Audubon. When Day, like a bright bird,

Throughout the heavens has flown, chased by the black

Falcon of Night, he sleeps beneath a tree;

Upspringing with the morn, the enthusiast holds

On his green way rejoicing: His to catch,

And fix the creatures of the wilderness

In pictured forms, not in the attitudes

Of stiff convenience, but in all their play

Of happy natural life, fearless, untamed

By man’s intrusion, wanton, easy, free,

Yet full of tart peculiarities,

Freakish, and quaint, and ever picturesque,

Their secret gestures, and the wild escapes

From out their eyes; watching how Nature works

Her fine frugalities of means, even there

Where all is lavish freedom, finer still,

The compensations of her processes,

Throughout their whole economy of life.

Sweet study! Oh! for one long summer day

With Audubon in the far Western woods!

We leave the shade, and take the open fields,

Winding our way by immemorial paths,

So soft and green, the poor man’s privilege:

May jealous freedom ever keep them free!

Such is the sultry languor of the day,

The eye sees nothing clear. But now it rests

On yonder sable patch--ah! yes, a band

Of mourners gathered round a closing grave,

In the old churchyard. How unnatural

The black solemnity in such a day

Of light and life! But who was he or she

Who thus goes dust to dust? A matron ripe

In years and grace at once for death and Heaven.

Her aged father’s stay until he died,

She then was wed and widowed in one year,

And made a mother. With her infant son

She dwelt in peace, and nourished him with love.

Mild and sedate, upgrew the old-fashioned boy;

And went to church with her, a little man

In garb and gravity: you would have smiled

To see him coming in. She lifted him

Up to his seat beside her, drew him near,

And took his hand in hers. There as he sate,

Oft looked she down to see if he was sleeping;

And drowsy half, half in the languor soft

Of innocent trust and aimless piety,

The child looked up into his mother’s face.

And she looked down into his eyes, and saw

The neighbouring window in their pupils’ balls,

With all its panes, reflected small but clear;

And gave his hand soft pressure with her hand,

Still shifting, trying still to be more soft.

God took him from her. In a holy stillness

She dwelt concentred. Decent were her means,

And so she changed not outwardly. No trouble

Gave she to neighbours; but she helped them oft.

And when she died, her grave-clothes, there they were,

Made by her own preparing heart and hand,

And neatly folded in an antique chest:

Not even a pin was wanting, where, to dress

Her body with due care, a pin should be;

And every pin was stuck in its own place.

Nor was all this from any hard mistrust

Of human love, for she the charities

Took with glad heart; but from a strength of mind

Which stood equipped in every point for death,

And, loving order, loved it to the end.

The mourners all are gone. How lonely still

The churchyard now! Here in their simple graves

The generations of the hamlet sleep:

All grassy simple, save that, here and there,

Love-planted flowerets deck the lowly sod.

Blame not that sorrowing love: ’Tis far too true

To make of Burial one of the Fine Arts;

Yet the sweet thought that scented violets spring

From the loved ashes, is a natural war

Against the foul dishonours of the grave.

Bloom then, ye little flowers, and sweetly smell;

Draw up the heart’s dust in your flushing hues,

And odorous breath, and give it to the bee,

And give it to the air, circling to go

From life to life, through all that living flux

Of interchange which makes this wondrous world.

Go where it will, the dear dust is not lost;

Found it will be in its own place and form,

On that great day, the Resurrection Day.

EVENING.

Those shouts proclaim the village school is out.

This way and that, the children break in groups;

Some by the sunny stile, and meadow path,

Slow sauntering homeward; others to the burn

Bounding, beneath the stones, and roots, and banks,

With stealthy hand to catch the spotted trout,

Or stab the eel, or slip their noose of hair

Over the bearded loach, and jerk him out.

Here on his donkey, slow as any snail

At morn from the far farm, but, homeward now,

Willing and fast, an urchin blithe and bold

Comes scampering on: His face is to the tail

In fun grotesque; stooping, with both his hands

He holds the hairy rump; his kicking feet

Go walloping; his empty flask of tin,

That bore his noon of milk, quiver of life,

And not of death, high-bounding on his back,

Rattles the while. With many a whoop behind,

Scouring the dusty road with their bare feet,

In wicked glee, a squad of fellow-imps

Come on with thistles and with nettle-wands,

Pursuingly, intent to goad and vex

The long-eared cuddy: He, the cuddy, lays

His long ears back upon his neck, his head

Lowered the while, and out behind him flings

High his indignant heels, at once to keep

That hurly-burly of tormentors off,

And rid his back of that insulting rider.

Unconscious boyhood! Oh! the perils near

Of luring Pleasures! In the evening shade,

Drowsy reclining, in my dream I saw

A comely youth, with wanton flowing curls,

Chase down the sunlit vale a glittering flight

Of winged creatures, some like birds, and some

Like butterflies, and moths of marvellous size

And beauty, purple-ruffed, and spotted rich

With velvet tippets, and their wings like flame--

Onward they drew him to a coming cloud,

With skirts of vapoury gold, but steaming dense

And dark behind, close gathering from the ground:

And on and in he went, in heedless chase.

And straight those skirts curled inward, and became

Part of the gloom: Compacted, solid, black,

It has him in, and it will keep him there.

The cloud stood still a space, as if to give

Time for the acting of some doom within,

Ominous, silent, grim. It moved again,

Tumultuous stirred, and broke in seams and flaws,

And gave me glimpses of its inner womb:

Outdarting forkèd tongues, and brazen fins,

Blue web-winged vampire-bats, and harpy faces,

And dragon crests, and vulture heads obscene,

I there beheld: Fierce were their levelled looks,

As if inflicted on some victim. Who

That victim was, I saw not. But are these

The painted Pleasures which that youth pursued

Adown the vale? How cruel changed! But where,

And what is he? Is he their victim there?

Heavy the cloud went passing by. From out

Its further end I saw that young man come,

Worn and dejected; specks and spots of dirt

Were on his face, and round his sunken eyes;

Hollow his cheeks, lean were his bony brows;

And lank and clammy were the locks that once

Played curling round his neck: The Passions there

Have done their work on him. With trembling limbs,

And stumbling as he went, he sate him down,

With folded arms, upon a sombre hill,

Apart from men, and from his father’s house,

That wept from him; and, sitting there, he looked

With heavy-laden eyes down on the ground.

But the night fell, and hid him from my view.

In yonder sheltered nook of nibbled sward,

Beside the wood, a gipsy band are camped;

And there they’ll sleep the summer night away.

By stealthy holes, their ragged tawny brood

Creep through the hedges, in their pilfering quest

Of sticks and pales, to make their evening fire.

Untutored things, scarce brought beneath the laws

And meek provisions of this ancient State!

Yet, is it wise, with wealth and power like hers,

And such resources of good government,

To let so many of her sons grow up

In untaught darkness and consecutive vice?

True, we are jealous free, and hate constraint,

And every cognisance o’er private life;

Yet, not to name a higher principle,

’Twere but an institution of police,

Due to society, preventative

Of crime, the cheapest and the best support

Of order, right, and law, that not one child,

In all this realm of ours, should be allowed

To grow up uninstructed for this life,

And for the next. Were every child State-claimed,

Laid hold of thus, and thus prepared to be

A proper member of society,

What founts of vice, with all their issuing streams,

Might thus be closed for ever, and at once!

Good propagating good, so far as man

Can work with God. Oh! this is the great work

To change our moral world, and people Heaven.

Would we had Christian statesmen to devise,

And shape, and work it out! Our liberties

Have limits and abatements manifold;

And soon the national will, which makes restraint

Part of its freedom, oft the soundest part,

Would recognise the wisdom of the plan,

Arming the state with full authority

For such an institute of renovation.

This work achieved at home, with what a large

Consistent exercise of power, and right

To hope the blessing, should we then go forth,

Pushing into the dark of Heathen worlds

The crystal frontiers of the invading Light,

The Gospel Light! The glad submitting Earth

Would cry, Behold, their own land is a land

Of perfect living light--how beautiful

Upon the mountains are their blessed feet!

Through yonder meadow comes the milk-maid’s song,

Clear, but not blithe, a melancholy chaunt,

With dying falls monotonous; for youth

Affects the dark and sad: Her ditty tells

Of captive lorn, or broken-hearted maid,

Left of her lover, but in dream thrice dreamt

Warned of his fate, when, with his fellow-crew

Of ghastly sailors on benighted seas

He clings to some black, wet, and slippery rock,

Soon to be washed away; what time their ship,

Driven on the whirlpool’s wheel, is sent below,

And ground upon the millstones of the sea.

The song has ceased. Up the dim elmy lane

The damsel comes. But at its leafy mouth

The one dear lad has watched her entering in,

And with her now comes softly side by side.

But oft he plucks a leaf from off the hedge,

For lack of words, in bashful love sincere;

Till, in his innocent freedom bolder grown,

He crops a dewy gowan from the path,

And greatly daring flings it at her cheek.

Close o’er the pair, along the green arcade,

Now hid, now seen against the evening sky,

The wavering, circling, sudden-wheeling bat

Plays little Cupid, blind enough for that,

And fitly fickle in his flights to be

The very Boy-god’s self. Where’er may lie

The power of arrows with the golden tips,

That silent lad is smit, nor less that girl

Is cleft of heart: Be this the token true:--

Next Sabbath morn, when o’er the pasture hills

Barefoot she comes to church, with Bible wrapped

In clean white napkin, and the sprig of mint

And southernwood laid duly in the leaves,

And down she sits beside the burn to wash

Her feet, and don her stockings and her shoes,

Before she come unto the House of Prayer,

With all her reverence of the Day, she’ll cast

(Forgive the simple thing!) her eye askance

Into the mirror of the glassy pool,

And give her ringlets the last taking touch,

For him who flung the gowan at her cheek

In that soft twilight of the elmy lane.

Pensive the setting Day, whether, as now

Cloudless it fades away, or far is seen,

In long and level parallels of light,

Purple and liquid yellow, barred with clouds,

Far in the twilight West, seen through some deep

Embrowned grove of venerable trees,

Whose pillared stems, apart, but regular,

Stand off against the sky: In such a grove,

At such an hour, permitted eyes might see

Angels, majestic Shapes, walking the earth,

Holding mild converse for the good of man.

Day melts into the West, another flake

Of sweet blue Time into the Eternal Past!

DUMFRIES, _May 18, 1846_.

CABRERA.

[_Historia de la Guerra Ultima en Aragon y Valencia, escrita par_ D. F.

CABELLO, D. F. SANTA CRUZ, y D. R. M. TEMPRADO. Madrid: 1846.]

On the twenty-seventh day of December 1806, at the collegiate town

of Tortosa in Catalonia, Maria Griño, the wife of José Cabrera, an

industrious and respectable mariner, gave birth to a son. Destined

to the church, this child, from his earliest boyhood, was the petted

favourite of his family. His parents looked to him as a staff and

support for their declining years, his sisters as a protector; and none

ventured to thwart his whims, or correct the failings of the young

student. Thus abandoned to the dictates of a disposition naturally

perverse, Ramon Cabrera led the life of a vagabond, rather than that

of a scholar and of one destined to holy orders. Avoided by the more

respectable of his classmates and townsmen, he fell amongst evil

associates, and soon became notorious for precocity of vice. The

reprimands of his superiors, the entreaties of his relatives, even

punishment and seclusion, were inefficacious to reclaim him. Disliking

books, the sole use he made of opportunities of study, was to imbibe

the abominable and sanguinary maxims of the Inquisition. The taint of

Carlism, widely spread amongst the clergy of the diocese of Tortosa,

whose bishop, Saenz, was an influential and devoted member of the

apostolical party, was speedily contracted by Cabrera. By character and

propensities better fitted for an unscrupulous military partisan than

for a minister of the gospel, for a devouring wolf than for a meek and

humble shepherd of God’s flock, no sooner was the cry of insurrection

raised in the kingdom of Arragon than he hastened to swell it with his

voice. On the 15th of November 1833 he joined Colonel Carnicer, who had

already planted on the ramparts of Morella the standard of Charles the

Fifth.

Six years have elapsed since the termination of the civil war in

Arragon and Valencia, and we should scarcely hope to interest English

readers by raking up its details. In taking the volumes named at

foot for the subject of an article, our intention is rather to give

a correct notion of the character of a man who by one party has been

extolled as a hero, by another stigmatized as a savage. A brief sketch

of his career, and a few personal anecdotes, will afford the best means

of deciding which of these epithets he may with most justice claim.

For the first sixteen months of the war, Cabrera acted as subordinate

to Carnicer, chief of the Arragonese Carlists; and during that time he

in no way distinguished himself, save by occasional acts of cruelty.

His presumption and want of military knowledge caused the loss of more

than one action--especially that of Mayals in Catalonia, in which, as

it was then thought, the Arragonese faction received its death-blow.

This unlucky encounter was followed by various lesser ones, equally

disastrous; and at the commencement of 1835, the Carlist chiefs in

the eastern provinces of the Peninsula were reduced to wander in the

mountains at the head of scanty and disheartened bands, seeking shelter

from the Queen’s troops, against whom they were totally unable to make

a stand. Furious at this state of things, and still more so at the

conduct of Carnicer, to whose lenity with the prisoners and population

he attributed their reverses, discontented also with his obscure and

subaltern position, Cabrera, who represented in Arragon the apostolical

or ultra-absolutist party, and who on that account had influential

supporters at the court of Charles the Fifth, resolved upon a bold

attempt to get rid of his chief and command in his stead. Abandoning

his post, he set out for Navarre, in company with a clever and resolute

female of considerable personal attractions, intended as a propitiatory

offering to the royal widower whose favour he was about to solicit.

On his arrival he obtained a private audience of Don Carlos, to whom

he represented himself as capable of commanding in Arragon, and of

achieving the triumph of the King’s cause. He exposed his plan of

campaign, accused Carnicer of weakness and mistaken humanity, and urged

the necessity of severe and sanguinary measures. The result of his

representations, and of the pleadings of his friends, some of whom were

the Pretender’s most esteemed counsellors, was his return to Arragon,

bearing a despatch by which Carnicer was ordered to make over his

command to Cabrera, and to present himself at headquarters in Navarre.

On the ninth of March 1835, Cabrera assumed the supreme command, and

Carnicer, in obedience to his instructions, set out for the Basque

country. On his road he fell into the hands of the Christinos, and was

shot at Miranda del Ebro.

Public opinion amongst the Carlists unhesitatingly attributed to

Cabrera the death of his former superior. Under pretence of their

serving him as guides, he had prevailed upon Carnicer to take with him

two officers whom he pointed out. These were also made prisoners; but

although the Eliot convention was not yet in existence, and quarter was

rarely given, both of them were exchanged after a very short delay.

The information received by the Christino authorities, of the route

that Carnicer was to follow, was sent from the village of Palomar on

a day when Cabrera was quartered there. Other circumstances confirmed

the suspicion of foul play, and that Carnicer had been betrayed by his

own party; and so generally was the treachery imputed to Cabrera, that

he at last took notice of the charge, and used every means to check

its discussion. So long as a year afterwards, he shot at Camarillas

the brother of one of the two officers who had accompanied Carnicer,

for having been so imprudent as to say that the latter had been sold

by Cabrera.[B] Such severity produced, of course, a directly opposite

effect to that desired by its author; for although Cabrera pretexted

other motives, its real ones were evident, and all men remained

convinced of his guilt. Subsequently the Carlist general Cabañero threw

the alleged calumny in his face in presence of several persons, and

instead of repelling it with his sword, Cabrera submitted patiently to

the imputation.

[B] By a remarkable coincidence, this execution occurred on the

16th of February 1836, on the same day and at the very same

hour that Cabrera’s mother was shot at Tortosa. To this

latter unfortunate and cruel act, which has been absurdly

urged as a justification of Cabrera’s atrocities, further

reference will presently be made.

Justly distrustful of those about him, Carnicer, when passing the night

in the mountains, was wont to change his sleeping place after all his

companions had retired to rest. On one occasion, in the neighbourhood

of Alacon, a soldier who had lain down upon the couch prepared for

his general, was assassinated by a pistol-shot. Cabrera was in the

encampment, and although the perpetrator of the deed was never

positively known, rumour laid the crime at his door. Whether or not the

dark suspicion was well founded, the establishment of its justice would

scarcely add a shade of blackness to the character of Ramon Cabrera.

Already, during a period of eighteen months, the kingdoms of Arragon

and Valencia had groaned beneath the calamities of civil war. Their

cattle driven, their granaries plundered, their sons dragged away to

become unwilling defenders of Don Carlos, the unfortunate inhabitants

could scarcely conceive a worse state than that of continual alarm

and insecurity in which they lived. They had yet to learn that what

they had hitherto endured was light to bear, compared to the atrocious

system introduced by the ruthless successor of Carnicer. From the

day that Cabrera assumed the command, the war became a butchery, and

its inflictions ceased to be confined to the armed combatants on

either side. Thenceforward, the infant in the cradle, the bedridden

old man, the pregnant matron, were included amongst its victims.

A mere suspicion of liberal opinions, the possession of a national

guardsman’s uniform, a glass of water given to a wounded Christino, a

distant relationship to a partisan of the Queen, was sentence of death.

The rules of civilized warfare were set at nought, and Cabrera, in

obedience to his sanguinary instincts, committed his murders not only

when they might possibly advance, but even when they must positively

injure, the cause of him whom he styled his sovereign. “Those days

that I do not shed blood,” said he, in July 1837, when waiting in the

ante-chamber of Don Carlos with Villareal, Merino, Cuevillas, and other

generals, “I have not a good digestion.” During the five years of his

command, his digestion can rarely have been troubled.

The task of recording the exploits and cruelties of Cabrera, and

the history of the war in which he took so prominent a part, has

been undertaken by three Spaniards of respectability and talent; the

principal of whom, Don Francisco Cabello, was formerly political chief

of the province of Teruel, in the immediate vicinity of Cabrera’s

strongholds. There he had abundant opportunities of gathering

information concerning the Carlist leader. In the book before us he

does not confine himself to bare assertion, but supplies an ample

appendix of justificatory documents, without which, indeed, many of the

atrocious facts related would find few believers.

The Carlist troops in Arragon and Valencia were of very different

composition from those in Navarre and Biscay. In the latter provinces,

an intelligent and industrious peasantry rose to defend certain

local rights and immunities, whose preservation, they were taught to

believe, was bound up with the success of Don Carlos. In Eastern Spain

the mass of the respectable and labouring classes were of liberal

opinions, and the ranks of the faction were swelled by the dregs and

refuse of the population. Highwaymen and smugglers, escaped criminals,

profligate monks, bad characters of every description, banded together

under command of chiefs little better than themselves, but who, by

greater energy, or from having a smattering of military knowledge,

gained an ascendancy over their fellows. In these motley hordes of

reprobates, who, after a time, schooled by experience and defeat,

were formed into regular battalions, capable of contending, with

chances of success, against equal numbers of the Queen’s troops, the

clergy played a conspicuous part. Rare were the encounters between

Christinos and Carlists, in which some sturdy friar did not lose his

life whilst heading and encouraging the latter; after every action

cowls and breviaries formed part of the spoil; scarce one of the rebel

leaders but had his clerical staff of chaplains, sharing in, often

stimulating, his cruelties and excesses. Those monks who did not openly

take the field, busied themselves in promoting disaffection amongst the

Queen’s partisans. The most subversive sermons were daily preached;

the confessional became the vehicle of insidious and treasonable

admonitions; the liberal section of the clergy was subjected to cruel

molestation and injustice. All these circumstances, added to the

scandal and discord that reigned in the convents, loudly called for

the suppression of the latter. Not only the government, which saw and

suffered from the rebellion so enthusiastically shared in and promoted

by the monks, but the very founders of the orders, could they have

revisited Spain, would have advised their abolition. The following

curious extract from the book now under review gives a striking picture

of Spanish monastic doings in the nineteenth century.

“If, in the year 1835, St Bernard could have accompanied us on our

visit to the monastery of Beruela in the Moncayo, surely he would have

been indignant, and would have chastised the monks; surely he himself

would have solicited the extinction of his order. Out of thirty monks,

very few confessed, and only two or three knew how to preach; every one

breakfasted and said mass just when he thought proper; by nine in the

morning they might be seen wandering about the neighbouring country

and gardens, or shooting small birds near the gates of the monastery;

at eleven, they assembled in a cell to play _monté_ with visitors

from the neighbouring towns and villages, winning and losing thousands

of reals. During dinner, instead of having some grave and proper book

read aloud to them, one of their number related obscene stories for the

amusement of his companions; at dessert the finest wines were served,

the monks played upon the piano, and sang indecent songs. The _siesta_

passed away the afternoon, until, towards evening, these self-denying

anchorites roused themselves from their slumbers, and resumed their

favourite amusements of birding and tale-telling. At nightfall the

green-cloth was again spread, and the cards were in full activity;

sometimes six or eight of the monks got upon their mules, and rode a

distance of two or three leagues to a ball, dressed in the height of

the fashion. The writer of these pages once asked the prior to let

him see the paintings executed by the brotherhood; he was conducted

to the apartments of the abbot, and in the most secluded of them was

shown a wretched daub, of which the subject was shamefully coarse and

disgusting. * * * Many of the women of the neighbouring village of Vera

went by the names of the monks; and so great became the scandal, that,

on one occasion, when the national guards were sent upon an expedition,

the alcalde issued an order prohibiting their wives to walk in the

direction of the monastery. One woman, who disobeyed the injunction,

was made to pay a fine, and narrowly escaped having her head shaved in

the public marketplace.”

The monks prosecuted the alcalde for this abuse of authority; but

in the course of the trial so many scandalous revelations were made

concerning them, that the over-zealous official got off with a very

light punishment. His proclamation, the sentence of the Audiencia of

Saragossa, and some other documents confirming the truth of the above

allegations against the monastery, are given in the appendix to Señor

Cabello’s book. “Certainly,” continues that gentleman, “all monasteries

were not like that of Beruela. There were many virtuous, enlightened,

and laborious monks; but if these were too numerous to be styled the

exceptions, they at any rate composed the minority.”

To return to Cabrera. His first act, upon assuming the supreme command,

was to collect the scattered remnant of Carnicer’s faction, which

amounted but to three hundred infantry and forty horsemen. With these

he commenced operations, limited at first, owing to the scanty numbers

of his band, to marauding expeditions amongst the villages, whence

he retreated to the mountains on the approach of the Queen’s forces.

His cruelties soon made him universally dreaded in the districts he

overran. To the militia especially he gave no quarter, slaying them

unmercifully, wherever he could lay hands upon them, even when they

capitulated on promise of good treatment. He was seconded by Quilez, El

Serrador, Llangostera, and other partisans, as desperate, and nearly

as bloodthirsty, as himself. With extraordinary and stupid obstinacy,

the Madrid government persisted in treating the Arragonese rebellion

as unimportant; and instead of at once sending a sufficient force for

its suppression, allowed the insurgents to gain ground, recruit their

forces, capture fortified places, and ravage the country, setting at

defiance the feeble garrisons, and gallant but unavailing efforts of

the national guard.

On the 11th of September, at day-break, Cabrera suddenly appeared in

the town of Rubielos de Mora. Believing him far away, the garrison were

taken entirely by surprise, and after a brief skirmish in the streets,

retreated to a fortified convent. Here they made a vigorous defence,

and no efforts of the Carlists were sufficient to dislodge them;

until at dawn upon the 12th, after a siege of twenty-four hours, the

Christinos perceived the points of the assailants’ pickaxes piercing

the wall that divided the convent from an adjoining house. They set

fire to the house, but unfortunately a high wind fanned the flames,

which speedily communicated to the convent. Even then the besieged

continued to defend themselves, but at last, overcome by fatigue,

hunger, and thirst, scorched, bruised, and exhausted, they accepted

the terms offered by the besiegers. Their lives were to be spared,

and they were to retain their clothes and whatever property they had

about them. Cabrera and Forcadell signed the agreement; and sixty-five

national guardsmen and soldiers of the regiment of Ciudad Real marched

out of the burning convent, and were escorted by the Carlists in the

direction of Nogueruelas. On reaching a plain near that town, known

as the Dehesa, or Pasture, Cabrera ordered a halt, that his soldiers

might eat their rations. The prisoners also were supplied with food.

The meal over, the Carlist chief formed his infantry and cavalry in

a circle, made the captives strip off every part of their clothing,

and bade them run. No sooner did they obey his order, than they were

charged with lance and bayonet, and slaughtered to a man. It was a fine

feast of blood for Cabrera and his myrmidons. On the body of one victim

twenty-six wounds were afterwards counted. When Cabrera departed, the

authorities of the adjacent town buried the bodies; but at the end of

the war, in the year 1841, upon the anniversary of the massacre, their

remains were disinterred and removed to Rubielos with much pomp and

religious ceremony.

Such were the pastimes of Cabrera, such was the faith he kept with

those who confided in his word. The barbarous execution detailed above

was one of many that occurred in the first year of his command. Up to

the month of February 1836, the number of his victims, slain after the

battle, in cold blood, often in defiance of capitulation, sometimes on

mere suspition of liberalism, amounted to one hundred and eighty-one.

This does not include murders committed on the highways and in the

mountains, but those only of which there were abundant witnesses, and

that are proved by dates and documents. Amongst the slaughtered, were

children and old men. Two lads of sixteen and seventeen years of age

were shot at Codoñera in presence of their mother. When she implored

Cabrera’s mercy, he told her that her sons should be spared if her

husband would give himself up and take their place. On hearing this

reply, worthy of a Caligula or a Nero, the unhappy woman swooned away,

and the infant at her breast fell dead from her arms as if struck by

lightning. The shock to the mother had killed the child. All these

atrocities were committed whilst Cabrera’s mother yet lived unmolested

in Tortosa.

Meanwhile the Christino general Nogueras, busied in the pursuit of the

rebels, passed his whole time in the mountains, often not entering a

town for a month together, except to get pay or shoes for his troops.

Wherever he went, he was assailed by the tears and lamentations of

bereaved wives and mothers. If he paused at Calatayud, they told him of

the death of nine national guards shot at Castejoncillo; at Caspe, the

weeping widows and orphans of five others presented themselves before

him; at Teruel he was horrified by the narrative of the massacre of

the Dehesa; when he traversed the plains of Alpuente, the Carrascal of

Yesa, where forty prisoners had been bayoneted, was pointed out to his

notice; in the Maestrazgo he found universal mourning for sixty-one

nationals, pitilessly butchered at Alcanar; in each hamlet where he

halted for the night, the authorities complained to him of the most

barbarous ill-treatment at the hands of Cabrera. Not a village did he

pass through, whose alcalde had not been brutally bastinadoed. From his

companions, his visitors, his guides, he heard continually of Cabrera’s

cruelties. In the whole district nothing, else was talked of. The sole

thought of the liberal party was how to put a period to them, and

to be avenged upon their perpetrator. The most humane and peaceable

men urged a system of reprisals, as both legitimate and likely to be

efficacious. Such a system, Nogueras, yielding to the public voice, and

enraged at the murder of two alcaldes, whom Cabrera had causelessly

shot, at last resolved to adopt. He demanded the execution of Cabrera’s

mother, in the vain hope that it would strike terror into the rebel

chief, and check his excesses. Most unhappy was the impulse to which

he yielded. The act itself was cruel and hasty; its consequences were

terrible. But such was the state of feeling in Arragon at that time,

that, until those consequences were felt, many approved the deed.

The captain-general of Arragon, Don Francisco Serrano, a man noted

for humanity and mildness, deemed the measure advisable, and even

announced it with satisfaction in a proclamation, by which he declared

a similar fate to be in reserve for Cabrera’s sisters, and for the

relatives of the other rebel chiefs, if the Carlists persisted in

their atrocities. Hitherto the whole odium of the fate of a forlorn

old woman, who perhaps deplored as much as any one the enormities

committed by her son, has rested upon Nogueras. This is hardly fair.

Ill-advised, and in a moment of just irritation, he urged a request,

too hastily complied with, speedily repented, and which, according to

the conviction of Señor Cabello, he would himself have retracted had he

not been absent from Tortosa when its accomplishment took place. A more

unfortunate act, to whomsoever it may chiefly be imputed, could not

have been devised. It was at once repudiated by the Spanish government,

by the Cortes and the nation. In the eyes of Europe, it went far to

convert Cabrera from a pitiless butcher into an injured victim. At a

distance from the theatre of war, the nine score unfortunates whom he

had massacred in cold blood were forgotten or overlooked. Pity for the

mother’s fate procured oblivion for the previous crimes of the son.

Filial affection and regret, working upon an impassioned nature, were

urged in extenuation of his subsequent excesses. His massacres became

holocausts, offered by a pious child to the manes of a murdered parent.

In Valderobles, on the 20th of February, Cabrera received intelligence

of his mother’s death. Its first result was a ferocious proclamation,

by an article of which he decreed the death of four women, one of

them the lady of a Christino colonel, then in his power. Had he shot

them at once, in the first heat of anger and heaviness of grief,

the act, however barbarous and severe, would have been palliated by

circumstances; but for seven days he dragged those unfortunate women

with him on all his marches, compelling them to wander barefoot over

the rugged Mountains of Arragon. So great were the sufferings of these

poor creatures, that even Cabrera’s aides-de-camp, albeit not very

tender-hearted, interceded for them with their chief. At last, on the

27th February, having returned to Valderobles, three of the women

were released from their misery by a violent death. This execution

was followed by many others. Seven and twenty national guards, taken

prisoners at Liria, were kept alive for two or three days, and then

massacred at Chiva. On the 17th of April, the ferryman of Olva, who

acted as spy to Cabrera, and who was shot after the war, in the year

1841, brought information to the Carlist camp that two companies of

Christino soldiers, quartered in the hamlet of Alcotas, kept but a

careless watch, and might easily be surprised. Cabrera immediately set

out, the ferryman acting as guide, and fell upon the Christinos before

they were aware of his approach. They defended themselves bravely;

but their ammunition being expended, and themselves surrounded,

they capitulated on promise of quarter. Cabrera’s chaplain, Father

Escorihuela, was the person who prevailed on them to surrender,

solemnly assuring them that their lives should be spared. A few hours

later, this same priest heard the confession of the officers previously

to their execution. To the soldiers, even the last consolations of

religion were refused. Unshriven, they were shot to the last man.

But enough of such sanguinary details. Notwithstanding a severe defeat

sustained a short time previously at Molina, Cabrera, in the spring of

1836, found himself at the head of four thousand infantry and three

hundred dragoons. He displayed extraordinary activity; improved the

organisation of his forces, and put them upon the footing of a regular

army. Owing to these ameliorations, and to the culpable negligence of

the Spanish government, who left the Army of the Centre unprovided with

the commonest necessaries for campaigning, he was now able to abandon

his former haunts in the mountains of Beceite, and to advance into the

open country. Seeing the necessity of a stronghold for his stores and

hospitals, and as a place of refuge in case of a reverse, he fixed upon

the town of Cantavieja, which, from its size, the strength of its

walls, its central position in the territory of his operations, and

especially from the difficulty of bringing artillery over the steep

and bad roads leading to it, was peculiarly suited to his purpose. He

set to work to fortify it; and in spite of the representations made to

the Madrid government by the inhabitants of the province, who foresaw

the evils that would accrue to them from its fortification, he was

allowed, without interruption or molestation, to put it in a state of

defence. The energy and skill exhibited by him at this period were

wonderfully great, and would have done honour to an older soldier. He

formed capacious hospitals, and vast depots for food and other stores;

established powder manufactories, and workshops for armourers and

tailors; and leaving a strong garrison in the place, again took the

field.

Some sharp fighting now occurred, and the Christinos had the worst of

it in several encounters; until at last the minister of war, roused

from his apathy, sent strong reinforcements to Arragon and Valencia.

Amongst others, General Narvaez, at the head of a brilliant brigade,

was detached from the army of the north, and after a rapid march of

nine days, during which he crossed nearly the whole north-eastern

corner of Spain from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean, arrived

at Teruel, and commenced operations with an activity that inspired the

Arragonese with fresh hopes of a prompt termination of the war. He was

in the field, and hard upon the heels of a Carlist corps commanded by a

chief known as the Organist, when an orderly, bearing despatches from

Madrid, came up at speed. “Yonder rebels,” said Narvaez, after reading

his letters, and pointing to the enemy, “may truly say that they exist

by royal order.” The despatches directed him instantly to quit Arragon,

and pursue Gomez, who had left Biscay on his celebrated expedition to

the southern provinces of Spain.

It is significant of the little estimation in which Cabrera was held

by the generals of the Navarrese and Biscayan faction, that when

Gomez, finding himself hard pressed by the Queen’s troops, sent to

Arragon for assistance, he did not address himself to Cabrera, who

commanded in chief in that province, but to Quilez and El Serrador,

subordinate partisans. Nevertheless Cabrera joined him, not with a

body of troops, but accompanied only by his aides-de-camp and staff,

and by one of his clerical mentors, the canon Cala y Valcarcel. Gomez

treated him with great contempt, and would give him no command in his

division; but he still continued with him, and was present at the

defeat of Villarrobledo, where Diego Leon with his hussars routed

Gomez, taking the whole of his baggage, twelve hundred prisoners, and

two thousand muskets. When the Carlists occupied Cordova, Cabrera was

one of the first men in the town, which he entered with a handful of

cavalry, under the command of Villalobos, to whom he had attached

himself, and who was killed by a shot fired from a window. If Gomez

disliked Cabrera, Cabrera, on his side, heartily despised Gomez. To

have captured three thousand national guardsmen in Cordova, and not

to have shot at least a couple of thousands of them--to have spared

the fifteen hundred men composing the garrison of Almaden, were

inexcusable weaknesses in the eyes of the Arragonese leader. Moreover,

his name was omitted in the despatches and proclamations announcing

the triumphs of the division; and at this he was indignant, viewing

it as a stain upon his reputation, and a dishonour to his rank. At

last, so troublesome did he become, constantly murmuring at whatever

was done, and even conspiring to promote mutiny amongst the men, that

Gomez, in order not to shoot him, which he otherwise would have been

compelled to do, insisted upon their parting company. On the 3d of

November, Cabrera, with his staff, orderlies, and a small escort, set

out for the mountains of Toledo. His numbers increased by the accession

of some parties of Carlist cavalry, picked up on the road, he passed

through La Mancha, and made for the Ebro, intending to visit Don Carlos

at Oñate. But whilst seeking a ford, he was surprised by the cavalry

of Irribarren. The lances of Leon and the sabres of Buenvenga made

short work of it with the astonished rebels. Cabrera and a handful of

men escaped, and only paused at midnight, when exhausted by their long

flight, in the village of Arévalo. Scarcely had they taken up their

quarters, when a column of Christino infantry dashed into the place,

bayoneting all before them. Unacquainted with the localities, Cabrera

wandered about the streets, seeking an exit; and finally, favoured by

the darkness, and after receiving a stab from a knife, and another from

a bayonet, he succeeded in escaping to the neighbouring forest. Here

he was found by one of his officers, who conveyed him to the house of

a village priest, named Moron, where he was concealed and taken care

of till his wounds were healed. At the commencement of 1837 he found

himself well enough to travel, and started for Arragon, escorted by

a squadron of cavalry and a few light infantry, whom he had sent for

from the Maestrazgo. But he had been tracked by Christino spies, and

Señor Cabello, then political chief of Teruel, had information of

his route. This he communicated to the military governor, an old and

dilatory officer, who moved out with a small body of troops, intending

to surprise Cabrera at Camañas, one of his halting places, and hoping

to gain in the field the promotion which he would have done better to

have awaited within the walls of his citadel. At a village, four hours’

march from Camañas, he paused, and wasted a day in sending out spies to

ascertain the movements of the enemy. His emissaries at last returned;

but only to tell him that Cabrera had rested at Camañas from ten in the

morning till one in the afternoon, and had then continued his journey,

travelling in a wretched carriage, and escorted by a hundred sleepy

infantry, and as many horsemen, whose beasts were unshod, and half

dead with fatigue. It was too late to pursue; and thus, owing to the

sluggishness and incapacity of this officer, Cabrera escaped, probably

without knowing it, from one of the greatest risks he had yet run.

The disastrous result of the various expeditions which, under Gomez,

Garcia, and others, had left the Basque provinces for the interior of

Spain, had not yet convinced Don Carlos that his cause was unpopular.

Deceived by his flatterers, who assured him that his appearance would

every where be the signal for a general uprising in his favour, he

crossed the Ebro in the month of May with sixteen battalions and

nine squadrons. Victorious at Huesca, at Gra, in Catalonia, his army

was utterly routed by the Baron de Meer and Diego Leon; and his sole

thought then became how to recross the Ebro, and take refuge at

Cantavieja, under the wing of his faithful Cabrera. Orders were sent to

the latter chief to come and meet his sovereign. He obeyed, and by his

assistance the passage of the river was accomplished. It was shortly

before this time that Cabrera, whilst witnessing the conflagration of

a village set on fire by his command, was struck by lightning, which

killed one of his aides-de-camp, and threw him senseless from his

horse. At first it was thought that he also was dead; but bleeding

restored him, and the next day he was again in the saddle, burning,

plundering, and shooting. His atrocities at this period surpass belief,

and are too horrible to recapitulate. The curious in such matters

may find them set down in all their hideous details, in the pages of

Señor Cabello. Whether on account of his cruelties, or of his other

bad qualities, most of the Carlist generals in Arragon about this time

refused to act with him, and even loaded him with abuse. Cabañero

actually challenged him to fight--a challenge which he did not think

proper to accept. The same chief repeatedly told Don Carlos that he

would rather serve as a private soldier in the army of Navarre than as

a general under the orders of Cabrera. Quilez, who hated Cabrera as the

assassin of his friend and countryman Carnicer, published an address

to the Arragonese troops, calling upon them to leave the standard of

the vile, dissolute, and cowardly Catalonian who disgraced them by

his cruelties. He invited their attention to the ruined and miserable

condition of their province since Cabrera had commanded there, and

urged them to petition Don Carlos to give them a general more worthy

of defending his rights and leading them to victory. So high did the

quarrel run, and so widely did it spread, that the Arragonese and

Catalonian battalions were near coming to blows. Don Carlos supported

Cabrera, and Quilez and Cabañero, with their divisions, separated

themselves from the army, and went to make war elsewhere.

In the month of July there were forty thousand infantry and four

thousand cavalry in the province of Teruel; for nearly four years the

district had been devastated and plundered by the Carlists, and the

harvest was not yet ripe. Under these circumstances the troops were

half-starved. The Carlist soldiers received no bread and only half

rations of meat. Even in the towns, and for ready money, provisions

were unobtainable. The Conde de Luchana, who then commanded the

Christinos, did all that general could do, more than could be expected

of any commander--all, in short, that he was wont to do, when the

opportunity offered, for the cause of liberty and of his Queen.

Thinking that the surrounding country would not supply rations because

the impoverished government could not pay cash for them, he drew upon

his private funds, and sent a commissioner with large sums of money

to Teruel, to purchase all the corn that could be obtained. This was

so little that it did not yield two days’ rations to each soldier.

At last Espartero and his division were summoned to the defence of

Madrid, then menaced by Zaratiegui. During his absence occurred the

action of Herrera, in which General Buerens, greatly outnumbered, was

defeated with considerable loss. But this reverse was soon revenged.

Encouraged by their recent success, Don Carlos and Cabrera approached

Madrid by forced marches. Their movements had been so eccentric and

rapid that they had thrown most of the Christino generals off the

scent. Espartero was an exception. After driving away Zaratiegui, he

had returned to Arragon. He now hurried back to Madrid, and entered

its gates a few hours after the arrival of the Pretender within

sight of that city, amidst the acclamations of the national guards,

who, until then, formed the sole garrison of the capital. Don Carlos

retired, Espartero followed, came up with him on the 19th of September,

and so mauled his army that he entirely gave up his mad project of

establishing himself in Madrid, sent Cabrera back to Arragon, and

scampered off in the direction of the Basque provinces. He was followed

up by Espartero and Lorenzo, overtaken and beaten at Covarubbias and

at Huerta del Rey, and finally entered Biscay in lamentable plight,

his illusions dissipated, his hopes of one day sitting upon the throne

of his ancestors entirely destroyed. Five months had elapsed since he

left Navarre, and strange had been their vicissitudes. Surrounded in

Sanguesa by bishops, ministers, generals, and courtiers, in Espejo a

handful of _Chapel-churris_ were his sole defenders. Enthroned and

almost worshipped at Huesca in the mountains of Bronchales he had

been glad to accept the support and guidance of a shepherd. One day

holding a levee, the next he was unable to write a letter in safety.

At Barbastro he bestowed places and honours upon his adherents; at El

Pobo he had not wherewith to reward the servants who waited on him.

Strange transitions, bitterly felt! By the failure of the expedition

all his prospects were blighted. A loan, and his recognition by the

Northern powers, both promised him contingently on his entering Madrid,

were now more remote than ever. That nothing might be wanting to the

discomfiture of this ill-starred prince, even the hypocrisy of his

character was discovered and exposed. Several of his letters to the

Princess of Beira were intercepted by General Oraa, and published in

the Spanish newspapers. Although written by one professedly so devout

and austere, their contents were both trivial and licentious.

The year 1838 opened disastrously for the Christinos. The strong town

and fort of Morella fell into the hands of Cabrera. Situated on a hill

in the valley formed by the highest sierras of the Maestrazgo, and at

the point of junction of Arragon, Catalonia, and Valencia, difficult

of approach, and protected by defiles and rivers, chief town of a

corregimiento or department, and possessing considerable wealth both

agricultural and manufacturing, it was, of all others, the place most

coveted by the Carlists. For a long time previously to its capture,

an officer of the faction, Paul Alio by name, had been entrusted with

its blockade. His orders were to employ every possible means to win

over the garrison or accomplish a _coup de main_. Various attempts had

proved unsuccessful, when, at the moment that he least expected it,

he was suddenly enabled to accomplish his objects. An artilleryman, a

deserter from the castle, offered to scale the walls with twenty men,

to surprise the sentinel upon the platform, and subsequently the whole

guard. The idea was caught at; ladders were made according to the

measure which the traitor had brought of the exact height of the walls,

and on the dark and rainy night of the 25th January a party of Carlists

crept up the hill, planted and climbed the ladders, stabbed the sentry,

who was asleep in his box, overcame the guard, and fired upon the town.

In vain did the unfortunate governor, Don Bruno Portillo, endeavour to

make his way into the fort; he was repulsed and wounded, and before

morning he and the remains of the garrison were compelled to abandon

Morella. Although an old and respected officer, he was accused of

treachery, or at least of want of vigilance. The latter might perhaps

be imputed to him, but there appear to have been no sufficient grounds

for the former charge. Eager to wash out the stain upon his reputation,

he returned to Morella, when General Oraa made his unsuccessful attack

upon it a few months later, and died leading the forlorn-hope, the

first man upon the breach.

The capture of Morella was a great triumph for Cabrera, whose chief

stronghold it became. It assured him the dominion of a large and

fertile tract of country. From its towers, lofty though they were, the

banner of Isabella the Second could nowhere be descried, save on the

coasts of the Mediterranean and the distant banks of the Ebro. The

termination of the war seemed less likely than ever.

It was about a month after the surprise of Morella, that General

Cabañero, encouraged by the recent success of his party, eager for

distinction, and perhaps jealous of Cabrera’s reputation, attempted the

most daring and dashing enterprise of the whole war. He conceived the

hope of capturing in one night, and with three thousand men, a fortress

that had defended itself for two months against the best generals of

Napoleon, backed by seventy thousand veterans, and a hundred pieces of

artillery. The capital of Arragon, the heroic city of Saragossa, was

the high game at which Cabañero ventured to fly. Had he succeeded, he

would have commanded the Ebro and the communication between Navarre

and Catalonia, and might have installed Don Carlos in the palace of

Alonzo the Fifth, and of Ferdinand the Catholic. Making one march from

Alloza, a distance of four-and-twenty hours, he arrived late at night

in the environs of Saragossa. Provided with ladders by the owner of

a neighbouring country-house, who was in his confidence, he caused a

few soldiers to scale the wall, and open the gate of the Virgin de

la Carmen, through which he marched. Some _vivas_ given for Cabañero

and Carlos Quinto roused the nearest inhabitants, and preserved the

main guard from a surprise. Shots were fired, and the alarm spread.

By this time Cabañero was far into the town, posting his battalions

in the squares and open places. In every street the Carlist drums

were beating, and several houses were broken open and entered. It was

a terrible moment for the inhabitants of Saragossa. Startled from

their sleep, without chiefs to direct or previous plan to guide them,

none knew what measures to adopt. Some few ran to the public squares,

and were taken prisoners; but the majority, recovering from their

first panic, adopted the best and surest means of ridding the city of

the unexpected foe. In an instant every window was thrown open, and

bristled with the muskets of the national guards. They could not be

confident of victory, for they were totally ignorant of the number

of their enemies; but if the triumph was to be for the latter, the

Sargossans were determined that it should cost them dear. When the

much-wished-for daylight appeared, the battle ceased to be from the

balconies; the nationals, and about two hundred soldiers of various

regiments who happened to be in the town, descended to the streets, and

after a sharp but short struggle, drove out the daring intruders. The

loss of the Carlists was a thousand men, inclusive of seven hundred

prisoners; that of the Saragossans amounted to about one hundred and

twenty.

Various strange incidents occurred during this night-attack. A French

writer who visited Arragon during the civil war, relates an anecdote of

two drummers who came up with each other at midnight in the streets of

Saragossa, both plying their sticks with extraordinary vigour, but to

very different tunes.

“Why do you beat the chamade?” demanded one.

“Why do you beat to arms?” retorted the other.

“I obey my orders.”

“And I mine.”

At that moment a passing lantern lit up the Carlist boina of the one,

and the blue national guard’s uniform of the other. The drummers stared

at each other for a moment, and then, instead of drawing their swords

and setting to, which one would have thought the most natural course

to adopt, they continued their march side by side, each indulging in

his own particular rub-a-dub. The rights of the sheepskin were mutually

respected.

The results of Cabañero’s attack were a cross of honour conferred

upon the national guards, who had made so gallant a defence, and the

death of the governor, Esteller, who was assassinated by the populace

two days afterwards. His conduct during the fight had been marked by

extreme weakness, and even cowardice. He entirely lost his presence

of mind, could give no orders, and remained shut up in his house in

spite of all the efforts of his aides-de-camp and secretaries to get

him out into the street. He would not even allow his servants and

orderlies to fire from the balconies, and his windows were the only

ones in Saragossa that continued closed during that eventful night.

The next day he was imprisoned, and it was intended to bring him to

trial; but on the following morning a mob composed of the lowest of the

people repaired to his place of confinement, brought him out into the

streets and there murdered him. At the time the delinquents remained

unpunished, but seven years later, in 1845, the sons of Esteller

revived the affair, and procured the condemnation to ten years’

galleys of one Chorizo, the leader of the _marranos_, or lazzaroni of

Saragossa. Chorizo, literally Sausage, whose real name was Melchior

Luna, was a butcher by trade, and a sort of popular demagogue amongst

the lower orders of his fellow citizens. But according to Señor

Cabello, his condemnation was unjust; and instead of sharing in the

murder of Esteller, he had done his utmost to protect him, even risking

his own life to save that of the unfortunate governor. After a lapse

of seven years it was difficult to get at the real facts of the case;

and the chief effect of the trial has been to publish the pusillanimity

of General Esteller, concerning which the people of Saragossa had

previously observed a generous silence.

On the 1st of October 1838, the Christino general Pardinas, with five

battalions and a regiment of cavalry, encountered Cabrera near the town

of Maella. The forces were about equal on either side, and at first

the Christinos had the advantage. But Pardinas having thrown his left

too forward, it was cut off and surrounded. Without waiting for help

from the centre and right wing, the battalions fell into confusion

and surrendered themselves prisoners, thereby grievously compromising

the remainder of the division. Astounded at the sudden loss of one

third of his force, Pardinas made desperate efforts to preserve order;

but all was in vain, and his heroic efforts and example served but

to procure him an honourable death, thereby saving him the pain of

reporting the most unfortunate and disgraceful action of the whole war.

More than three-fifths of the division were killed or taken prisoners.

The fate of the latter could not be doubtful, for Cabrera was their

captor. Whilst still on the field of battle, with the groans of the

wounded and dying sounding in his ears, he sent an order to Major

Espinosa to kill a number of dragoons of the regiment del Rey, whom

he had made prisoners. Espinosa replied, that, the action once over,

he had forgotten how to use his lance. Cabrera, however, had little

difficulty in finding a more pliant agent. The unhappy dragoons were

stripped naked and bayoneted: Espinosa was deprived of his command and

of future opportunities of distinction. The same afternoon Cabrera shot

twenty-seven wounded, in hospital at Maella. Amongst his prisoners were

ninety-six sergeants. These he crammed into a dark and narrow dungeon,

and after a few days, proposed to them to take service in the rebel

army. They all refused, and one of them imprudently added, “Sooner die

than serve with robbers.” These words were reported to Cabrera, and

he sought to discover the man who had uttered them; but although the

other ninety-four well knew who it was, no menaces could induce them

to betray their comrade. Any one but Cabrera would have been touched

by such courage and constancy, but he only found in it a pretext

for murder. The ninety-six sergeants were shot at Horcayo. Similar

enormities now followed in rapid succession; until the exasperation in

Saragossa and Valencia became extreme, and the inhabitants tumultuously

assembled, demanding reprisals. These it was not safe to refuse.

General Mendez Vigo, commanding at Valencia, and who ventured to

deny them, was shot in the streets. Juntas were formed, and Carlist

prisoners were executed. One of these unfortunates, when marching to

his doom, was heard to exclaim, “Not to the people of Valencia, but

to the infamous Cabrera, do I ascribe my death.” There was a great

outcry made at the time, especially by persons who knew nothing of

the real facts of the case, concerning these reprisals, which were in

fact unavoidable. Cabrera’s atrocities had reached such a pitch, that

disaffection was widely spreading in Arragon and Valencia. The people,

finding themselves constantly in mourning for the death of some near

relative, murdered by his orders, murmured against the government

which could not protect them, and accused their rulers of Carlism and

treachery, of cowardice and indifference. There was danger, almost a

certainty indeed, of an insurrection, in which every Carlist prisoner

and a vast number of innocent persons would inevitably have been

sacrificed. Cabrera would listen to no proposals for exchanges, but

persisted in shooting all who fell into his hands. Without reckoning

the innumerable captives dead from hunger and cruel treatment, or those

murdered on the march and in the Carlist depots, but counting only

such as were shot and stabbed before witnesses, Cabrera had killed,

previously to his mother’s death, one hundred and eighty-one soldiers

and nationals; and seven hundred and thirty subsequently to that event,

and up to the 1st of November 1838. His subalterns had slain three

hundred and seventy more, making a total of twelve hundred and eighty.

Under these circumstances, there was nothing for it but a system of

retaliation. This, General Van Halen and the juntas adopted, and after

a very short time the good effect was manifest. The imprecations of

the Carlist prisoners, and the murmurs of his party, reached the ears

of Cabrera in tones so menacing, that he was compelled to listen. The

treaty for exchange of prisoners and cessation of reprisals, signed

by him and Van Halen, caused much discontent amongst the coffeehouse

politicians of the Puerta del Sol; but those who had experience of the

war, and who dwelt in its district, appreciated the firmness of the

Christino general, as well as the docility and true dignity with which

he signed the honourable name of a brave soldier beside that of the

assassin Count of Morella.

Anticipating an attack upon the fort of Segura, to whose possession

he attached great importance, Cabrera took measures for its defence.

For this, if the inhabitants of the town did not unite in it, a very

large garrison was necessary. Cabrera endeavoured, therefore, by great

promises, to win over the townspeople, menacing them at the same time

with the destruction of their town if they did not comply with his

wishes. They held a meeting, and its result was a declaration that

they would never take up arms against the Queen, and that sooner

than do so, they would submit to be driven from their dwellings, and

become wanderers in the woods. Cabrera took them at their word, and in

a few days the plough might have passed over the site of Segura. The

magnificent church, the public edifices, and three hundred and fifty

houses, were razed to the ground. The castle alone was preserved. The

inhabitants themselves had been compelled to accomplish the work of

destruction; and when that was done, sixteen hundred men, women, and

children emigrated to the neighbouring villages, or took shelter in the

caves and hollows of the pine forests. In this circumstance, it is hard

to say which is most striking, the barbarity of the destroyer, or the

courageous patriotism of the victims. The expected siege of the castle

soon followed, but the inclemency of the weather compelled Van Halen

to raise it. He was removed from the command, and Nogueras, who was to

succeed him, being attacked by illness, the army in Arragon remained

for a while without a competent chief. Cabrera took advantage of this,

prosecuted the war with great activity and vigour, and captured some

fortified places. Amongst others, he laid siege to Montalban, which was

desperately defended for fifty days. At the end of that time, the town

being reduced to ruins, the garrison and inhabitants evacuated it, and

retired to Saragossa. During the siege, there occurred a trait worthy

of Cabrera. The medicines for the wounded being expended, the colonel

of the national guards spoke from the walls to the Carlist general, and

begged permission to send to the nearest village for a fresh supply.

There were many wounded Carlists in the town hospital, and it was

expected, therefore, that the request would be granted. Cabrera refused

it, but, feigning compassion, advised Vicente to hoist a flag upon

the hospital, that it might be respected by the besiegers’ artillery.

The flag was hoisted, and instantly became a mark for every gun the

Carlists had. In the course of that day, sixty-six shells fell into the

hospital, killing many of the wounded, and, amongst others, thirteen

Carlist prisoners. During this siege, a young woman, two-and-twenty

years of age, Manuela Cirugeda by name, emulous of the example of

the Maid of Saragossa, served as a national guard, and fought most

valiantly, until incapacitated by illness, the result of her fatigues

and exertions.

Were it his only crime, Cabrera’s treatment of his prisoners in

the dungeons of Morella, Benifasa, and other places, would suffice

to brand him with eternal infamy. From the commencement of the war

till he was driven out of the country, twelve thousand soldiers and

two thousand national guards fell into his hands. Half of the first

named, and two-thirds of the latter, died of hunger, ill treatment,

and of the diseases produced by the stifling atmosphere of their

prisons, by the bad quality of their food, and the state of general

destitution in which they were left. Those who bore up against their

manifold sufferings only regained their liberty to enter an hospital,

incapacitated for further military service. It took months to rid them

of the dingy, copper-coloured complexion acquired in their damp and

filthy prisons, and some of them never lost it. When the prisoners

taken in the action of Herrera arrived at Cantavieja, they were

barefooted, and for sole raiment many had but a fragment of matting,

wherewith to cover their nakedness, and defend themselves from the

weather. They were thrust into a convent, and no one was allowed to

communicate with them: even mothers, who anxiously strove to convey a

morsel of bread to their starving sons, were pitilessly driven away.

Sick and squalid, they were marched off to Beceite, and on the road

more than two hundred were murdered. Those who paused or sat down,

overcome by fatigue, were disposed of with the bayonet; some fainted

from exhaustion, and had their heads crushed with large stones, heaped

upon them by their guards. The muleteers, who compassionately lent

their beasts to the wounded or dying, were unmercifully beaten. On

reaching Beceite, the daily ration of each prisoner was two ounces of

raw potatoes. After repeated entreaties of the inhabitants they were

at last allowed to leave their prison by detachments, in order to

clean the streets; and by this means they were enabled to receive the

assistance which the very poorest of the people stinted themselves and

their children to afford them. In spite of the prohibitions of the

Carlist authorities, bread, potatoes, and maize ears were thrown into

the streets for their relief. But even of these trifling supplies they

were presently deprived, for an epidemic broke out amongst them, and

they were forbidden to leave their prison lest they should communicate

it to the troops. Will it be believed that in a Christian country, and

within the last ten years, men were reduced to such extremities as to

devour the dead bodies of their companions? Such was the case. It has

been printed fifty times, and hundreds of living witnesses are ready to

attest it. When the Carlist colonel Pellicer, the savage under whose

eyes these atrocities occurred, discovered the horrible means by which

his wretched captives assuaged the pangs of hunger, he became furious,

caused the prisoners to be searched, and shot and bayoneted those who

had preserved fragments of their frightful meal. The poor creatures

thus condemned marched to death with joy and self-gratulation; those

who remained accused themselves of a similar crime, and entreated

that they also might be shot. Twelve hundred entered the prison; two

hundred left it; and of these, thirty were massacred upon the road

because they were too weak to march. In the appendix to his book, Señor

Cabello gives the diary of a survivor, an officer of the regiment

of Cordova. The cruelties narrated in it exceed belief. They are

nevertheless confirmed by unimpeachable evidence. The following extract

is from a document dated the 20th of March 1844, and signed by fifteen

respectable inhabitants of Beceite.

“During the abode of the said prisoners in this town, each day twelve

or fourteen of them died from hunger and misery. It was frequently

observed, when they were conveyed from the prison to the cemetery,

that some of them still moved, and made signs with their hands not to

bury them; some even uttered words, but all in vain--_dead or alive,

those who once left the prison were buried_, and only one instance was

known of the contrary occurring. The chaplain of a Carlist battalion

had gone to the burying-ground to see if the graves were deep enough,

and whilst standing there, _one of a pile of corpses pulled him by the

coat_. This attracted his attention, and he had the man carried to the

hospital. * * * There would be no end to our narrative if we were to

give a detailed account of the sufferings of these prisoners; so great

were they, as at last to shock even the commandant of the depot, Don

Juan Pellicer, who was heard to exclaim more than once _that he wished

somebody would blow out his brains, for he was sick of beholding so

much misery and suffering_. The few inhabitants who remained in the

town behaved well, and notwithstanding that the Carlists robbed them of

all they had, and that it was made a crime to help the prisoners, they

managed in secret to give them some relief, especially to the officers.

The facts here set down are true and certain, and of them more than a

hundred eyewitnesses still exist.”

When the war in Biscay and Navarre was happily concluded by the

convention of Vergara, the Duke de la Victoria invited Cabrera to

follow the example of the other Carlist generals, offering to him and

to the rebel troops under his command the same terms that had been

conceded to those in the Basque provinces. But the offer, generous

though it was, and undeserved by men who had made war like savages

rather than as Christians, was contemptuously spurned. Those best

acquainted with the character of Cabrera, were by no means surprised at

the refusal. They foresaw that he would redouble his atrocities, and

only yield to brute force. These anticipations were in most respects

realised.

In the months of October 1839, Espartero, with the whole army of the

North, consisting of forty thousand infantry, three thousand cavalry,

and the corresponding artillery, entered lower Arragon. Anxious to

economise the blood of his countrymen, trusting that Cabrera would open

his eyes to the inutility of further resistance, confiding also, in

some degree, in the promises of certain Carlist chiefs included in the

treaty of Vergara, and who expected by their influence to bring over

large bodies of the rebels, the Duke de la Victoria remained inactive

during the winter, merely blockading the Carlists within their lines.

Meanwhile Cabrera, debilitated by six years of anxiety and agitation,

and by the dissolute life he had led from a very early age, and preyed

upon by vexation and rage occasioned him by the convention of Vergara,

fell seriously ill, and for some time his life was in peril. Contrary

to expectation, he recovered; but sickness or reflection had unmanned

him, and it is certain that in his last campaign he displayed little

talent and less courage. Not so his subordinates. The Arragonese

Carlists fought like lions, and the final triumph of the Queen’s army

and of their distinguished leader was not achieved without a desperate

struggle.

The first appearance of spring was the signal of action for the

Christinos. Even before the inclement season had entirely passed away,

in the latter days of February 1840, Espartero attacked Segura. One

day’s well-directed cannonade knocked the fort about the ears of the

garrison, and in spite of the proverb, _Segura serà segura, ó de Ramon

Cabrera sepultura_, the place capitulated. The defence of Castellote

was longer, and extraordinarily obstinate. Pelted with shot and shell,

the walls mined and blown up and reduced to ruins, its garrison, with a

courage worthy of a better cause, still refused to surrender, hoisted a

black banner in sign of no quarter, and received a flag of truce with

a volley. The position of the castle, on the summit of a steep and

rugged rock, rendered it almost impossible to form a column of attack

and take it by assault. At last, however, this was attempted, and after

a desperate combat of an hour’s duration, and great loss on the part

of the assailants, the latter established themselves in a detached

building at the eastern extremity of the fortress. The besieged still

defended themselves, hurling down hand-grenades and masses of stone,

until at last, exhausted and overcome, they hung out a white flag. By

their obstinate defence of an untenable post, when they had no hope of

relief, they had forfeited their lives. Fortunately their conqueror was

no Cabrera.

“They were Spaniards,” said Espartero in his despatch to Madrid,

“blinded and deluded men who had fought with the utmost valour, and I

could not do less than view them with compassion.” Their lives were

spared, and the wounded were carried to the hospital in the arms of

their recent opponents.

Cabrera had sworn to die before giving up Morella, but when the time

came his heart failed him. He visited the town, harangued the garrison

and inhabitants from the balcony of his quarters, and told them that

he had come to share their fate. A day or two later he marched away,

taking with him all his particular friends and favourites, and left

Morella to take care of itself. It was the last place attacked by

Espartero. The siege lasted eleven days, but Cabrera did not come

to its relief; dissension arose amongst the garrison, and surrender

ensued. Three thousand prisoners, including a number of Carlist civil

functionaries, a quantity of artillery, ammunition, and other stores,

fell into the hands of the victors. Morella taken, the war in Arragon

was at an end.

Determined that his last act should be worthy of his whole career,

Cabrera, now upon his road to France, precipitated into the Ebro a

number of national guards, whom he carried with him as captives. Others

were shot, and some few were actually dragged across the frontier,

bound hand and foot, and only liberated by the French authorities.

Such wanton cruelty is the best refutation of the arguments of certain

writers, who have maintained that Cabrera was severe upon principle,

with the sole objects of intimidating the enemy, and of furthering the

cause of his king. On the eve of his departure from Spain, himself a

fugitive, the self-styled sovereign a captive in a foreign land, what

end, save the gratification of his insatiable thirst of blood, could be

attained by the massacre of prisoners? At last, on the sixth of July

1840, he delivered his country from the presence of the most execrable

monster that has disgraced her modern annals. On that day, at the head

of twenty battalions and two hundred cavalry, Cabrera entered France.

By superficial persons, unacquainted with facts, attempts have been

made to cast upon the whole Spanish nation the odium incurred by a

small section of it. The cruelties of Cabrera and his likes, have been

taken as an index to the Spanish character, wherein ferocity has been

asserted to be the most conspicuous quality. Nothing can be more unjust

and fallacious than such a theory. Cabrera’s atrocities were viewed and

are remembered in Spain with as deep a horror as in England or France.

Those who shared in them were a minute fraction of the population, and

even of these, many acted on compulsion, and shuddered at the crimes

they were obliged to witness and abet. Is the character of a nation

to be argued from the excesses of its malefactors, even when, banded

together and in military array, they assume the style and title of

an army? Assuredly not. The Carlist standard, uplifted in Arragon,

became a rallying point for the scum of the whole Spanish people. Under

Cabrera’s banner, murder was applauded, plunder tolerated, vice of

every description freely practised. And accordingly, escaped galley

slaves, ruined profligates, the worthless and abandoned, flocked to

its shelter. To these may be added the destitute, stimulated by their

necessities; the ignorant and fanatical, led away by crafty priests;

the unreflecting and unscrupulous, seeking military distinction where

infamy alone was to be reaped. Bad example, seduction, even force, each

contributed its quota to the army of Cabrera. From the commencement,

the war was of a very different nature in Navarre and in Arragon. Both

chiefs and soldiers were of different origin, and fought for different

ends. To Navarre repaired those men of worth and respectability who

conscientiously upheld the rights of Don Carlos; the battalions were

composed of peasants and artisans. In Arragon and Valencia, a few

desperate and dissolute ruffians, such as Cabrera, Llangostera, Quilez,

Pellicer, assembled under their orders the refuse of the jails.

“The Navarrese recruit,” says Señor Cabello, “when he set out to join

the Carlists, took leave of his friends and relatives, and even of the

alcalde of his village; the volunteer into the faction of Arragon,

departed by stealth after murdering and robbing some private enemy or

wealthy neighbour. The Biscayan Carlist, going on leave to visit his

mistress, took her at most a flower gathered in the gardens of Bilboa,

when a soldier of Cabrera revisited his home, he carried with him the

spoils of some slaughtered family or plundered dwelling. All Spain

knew Colonel Zumalacarregui; but only the lay brothers of St Domingo

de Tortosa, or the gendarmes of Villafranca, could give an account of

Cabrera or the Serrador. To treat with the former was to treat with

one who, a short time previously, had commanded with distinction the

first light infantry regiment of the Spanish army. To negotiate with

the latter was to condescend to an equality with the Barbudo or José

Maria.”[C]

[C] Celebrated Spanish robbers.

Even in the inevitable confusion of civil war, a distinction may

and must be made between the man who takes up arms to defend a

principle, and him who makes the unhappy dissensions of his country a

stepping-stone to his own ambition, a pretext for the indulgence of the

worst vices and most unhallowed passions.

MY COLLEGE FRIENDS. NO. IV.

CHARLES RUSSELL, THE GENTLEMAN COMMONER.

CHAP. II.

It was the last night of the boat races. All Oxford, town and gown, was

on the move between Iffley and Christchurch meadow. The reading man

had left his ethics only half understood, the rowing man his bottle

more than half finished, to enjoy as beautiful a summer evening as ever

gladdened the banks of Isis. One continued heterogeneous living stream

was pouring on from St “_Ole’s_” to King’s barge, and thence across the

river in punts, down to the starting-place by the lasher. One moment

your tailor puffed a cigar in your face, and the next, just as you made

some critical remark to your companion on the pretty girl you just

passed, and turned round to catch a second glimpse of her, you trod on

the toes of your college tutor. The contest that evening was of more

than ordinary interest. The new Oriel boat, a London-built clipper, an

innovation in those days, had bumped its other competitor easily in the

previous race, and only Christchurch now stood between her and the head

of the river. And would they, could they, bump Christchurch to-night?

That was the question to which, for the time being, the coming

examination, and the coming St Leger, both gave way. Christchurch,

that had not been bumped for ten years before--whose old blue and

white flag stuck at the top of the mast as if it had been nailed

there--whose motto on the river had so long been “Nulli secundus?” It

was an important question, and the Christchurch men evidently thought

so. Steersman and pullers had been summoned up from the country, as

soon as that impertinent new boat had begun to show symptoms of being

a dangerous antagonist, by the rapid progress she was making from the

bottom towards the head of the racing-boats. The old heroes of bygone

contests were enlisted again, like the Roman legionaries, to fight the

battles of their “vexillum,” the little three-cornered bit of blue and

white silk before mentioned; and the whole betting society of Oxford

were divided into two great parties, the Oriel and the Christchurch,

the supporters of the old, or of the new dynasty of eight oars.

Never was signal more impatiently waited for than the pistol-shot

which was to set the boats in motion that night. Hark! “Gentlemen,

are--you--ready?” “No, No!” shouts some umpire, dissatisfied with the

position of his own boat at the moment. “Gentlemen, are you ready?”

Again “No, no, no!” How provoking! Christchurch and Oriel both

beautifully placed, and that provoking Exeter, or Worcester, or some

boat that no one but its own crew takes the slightest interest in

to-night, right across the river! And it will be getting dusk soon.

Once more--and even Wyatt, the starter, is getting impatient--“Are you

ready?” Still a cry of “No, no,” from some crew who evidently never

will be satisfied. But there goes the pistol. They’re off, by all

that’s glorious! “Now Oriel!” “Now Christchurch!” Hurrah! beautifully

are both boats pulled--how they lash along the water! Oriel gains

evidently! But they have not got into their speed yet, and the light

boat has the best of it at starting. “Hurrah, Oriel, its all your own

way!” “Now, Christchurch, away with her!” Scarcely is an eye turned

on the boats behind; and, indeed, the two first are going fast away

from them. They reach the Gut, and at the turn Oriel presses her rival

hard. The cheers are deafening; bets are three to one. She must bump

her! “Now, Christchurch, go to work in the straight water!” Never did

a crew pull so well, and never at such disadvantage. Their boat is

a tub compared with the Oriel. See how she buries her bow at every

stroke. Hurrah, Christchurch! The old boat for ever! Those last three

strokes gained a yard on Oriel! She holds her own still! Away they go,

those old steady practised oars, with that long slashing stroke, and

the strength and pluck begins to tell. Well pulled, Oriel! Now for it!

Not an oar out of time, but as true together as a set of teeth! But

it won’t do! Still Christchurch, by sheer dint of muscle, keeps her

distance, and the old flag floats triumphant another year.

Nearly hustled to death in the rush up with the racing boats, I panted

into the stern sheets of a four-oar lying under the bank, in which I

saw Leicester and some others of my acquaintance. “Well, Horace,” said

I, “what do you think of Christchurch now?” (I had sufficient Tory

principle about me at all times to be a zealous supporter of the “old

cause,” even in the matter of boat-racing.) “How are your bets upon

the London clipper, eh?” “Lost, by Jove,” said he; “but Oriel ought to

have done it to-night; why, they bumped all the other boats easily, and

Christchurch was not so much better; but it was the old oars coming up

from the country that did it. But what on earth is all that rush about

up by the barges? They surely are not going to fight it out after all?”

Something had evidently occurred which was causing great confusion;

the cheering a moment before had been deafening from the partisans

of Christchurch, as the victorious crew, pale and exhausted with the

prodigious efforts they had made, mustered their last strength to throw

their oars aloft in triumph, and then slowly, one by one, ascended into

the house-boat which formed their floating dressing-room; it had now

suddenly ceased, and confused shouts and murmurs, rather of alarm than

of triumph, were heard instead: men were running to and fro on both

banks of the river, but the crowd both in the boats on the river and on

shore made it impossible for us to see what was going on. We scrambled

up the bank, and were making for the scene of action, when one of the

river-officials ran hastily by in the direction of Iffley.

“What’s the matter, Jack?”

“Punt gone down, sir,” he replied without stopping; “going for the

drags.”

“Anybody drowning?” we shouted after him.

“Don’t know how many was in her, sir,” sung out Jack in the distance.

We ran on. The confusion was terrible; every one was anxious to be of

use, and more likely therefore to increase the danger. The punt which

had sunk had been, as usual on such occasions, overloaded with men,

some of whom had soon made good their footing on the neighbouring

barges; others were still clinging to their sides, or by their

endeavours to raise themselves into some of the light wherries and

four oars, which, with more zeal than prudence, were crowding to their

assistance, were evidently bringing a new risk upon themselves and

their rescuers. Two of the last of the racing eights, too, coming up to

the winning-post at the moment of the accident, and endeavouring vainly

to back water in time, had run into each other, and lay helplessly

across the channel, adding to the confusion, and preventing the

approach of more efficient aid to the parties in the water. For some

minutes it seemed that the disaster must infallibly extend itself.

One boat, whose crew had incautiously crowded too much to one side in

their eagerness to aid one of the sufferers in his struggles to get on

board, had already been upset, though fortunately not in the deepest

water, so that the men, with a little assistance, easily got on shore.

Hundreds were vociferating orders and advice, which few could hear,

and none attended to. The most effectual aid that had been rendered

was the launching of two large planks from the University barge, with

ropes attached to them, which several of those who had been immersed

succeeded in reaching, and so were towed safely ashore. Still, however,

several were seen struggling in the water, two or three with evidently

relaxing efforts; and the unfortunate punt; which had righted and

come up again, though full of water, had two of her late passengers

clinging to her gunwale, and thus barely keeping their heads above the

water’s edge. The watermen had done their utmost to be of service,

but the University men crowded so rashly into every punt that put off

to the aid of their companions, that their efforts would have been

comparatively abortive had not one of the pro-proctors jumped into

one, with two steady hands, and authoritatively ordering every man

back who attempted to accompany him, reached the middle of the river,

and having rescued those who were in most imminent danger, succeeded

in clearing a sufficient space round the spot to enable the drags to

be used, (for it was quite uncertain whether there might not still be

some individuals missing.) Loud cheers from each bank followed this

very sensible and seasonable exercise of authority; another boat, by

this example, was enabled to disencumber herself of superfluous hands,

and by their united exertions all who could be seen in the water were

soon picked up and placed in safety. When the excitement had in some

degree subsided, there followed a suspense which was even more painful,

as the drags were slowly moved again and again across the spot where

the accident had taken place. Happily our alarm proved groundless. One

body was recovered, not an University man, and in his case the means

promptly used to restore animation were successful. But it was not

until late in the evening that the search was given up, and even the

next morning it was a sensible relief to hear that no college had found

any of its members missing.

I returned to my rooms as soon as all reasonable apprehension of a

fatal result had subsided, though before the men had left off dragging,

and was somewhat surprised, and at first amused, to recognise, sitting

before the fire in the disguise of my own dressing-gown and slippers,

Charles Russell.

“Hah! Russell, what brings you here at this time of night?” said I;

“however, I’m very glad to see you.”

“Well, I’m not sorry to find myself here, I can tell you; I have been

in a less comfortable place to-night.”

“What do you mean?” said I, as a suspicion of the truth flashed upon

me--“Surely”----

“I have been in the water, that’s all,” replied Russell quietly; “don’t

be alarmed, my good fellow, I’m all right now. John has made me quite

at home here, you see. We found your clothes a pretty good fit, got up

a capital fire at last, and I was only waiting for you to have some

brandy and water. Now, don’t look so horrified, pray.”

In spite of his good spirits, I thought he looked pale; and I was

somewhat shocked at the danger he had been in--more so from the

suddenness of the information.

“Why,” said I, as I began to recall the circumstance, “Leicester and

I came up not two minutes after it happened, and watched nearly every

man that was got out. You could not have been in the water long then, I

hope?”

“Nay, as to that,” said Russell, “it seemed long enough to me, I can

tell you, though I don’t recollect all of it. I got underneath a punt

or something, which prevented my coming up as soon as I ought.”

“How did you get out at last?”

“Why, that I don’t quite remember; I found myself on the walk by King’s

barge; but they then had to turn me upside down, I fancy, to empty me.

I’ll take that brandy by itself, Hawthorne, for I think I have the

necessary quantity of water stowed away already.”

“Good heavens! don’t joke about it; why, what an escape you must have

had!”

“Well, seriously then, Hawthorne, I _have_ had a very narrow escape,

for which I am very thankful; but I don’t want to alarm any one about

it, for fear it should reach my sister’s ears, which I very much wish

to avoid, for the present at all events. So I came up to your rooms

here as soon as I could walk. Luckily, John saw me down at the water,

so I came up with him, and got rid of a good many civil people who

offered their assistance; and I have sent down to the lodgings to tell

Mary I have staid to supper with you; so I shall get home quietly, and

she will know nothing about this business. Fortunately, she is not in

the way of hearing much Oxford gossip, poor girl!”

Russell sat with me about an hour, and then, as he said he felt very

comfortable, I walked home with him to the door of his lodgings, where

I wished him good-night, and returned.

I had intended to have paid him an early visit the next morning; but

somehow I was lazier than usual, and had scarcely bolted my commons in

time to get to lecture. This over, I was returning to my rooms, when my

scout met me.

“Oh, sir,” said he, “Mr Smith has just been here, and wanted to see

you, he said, particular.”

Mr Smith? Of all the gentlemen of that name in Oxford, I thought I had

not the honour of a personal acquaintance with one.

“Mr Russell’s Mr Smith, sir,” explained John: “the little gentleman as

used to come to his rooms so often.”

I walked up the staircase, ruminating within myself what possible

business “poor Smith” could have with me, of whom he had usually

appeared to entertain a degree of dread. Something to do with Russell,

probably. And I had half resolved to take the opportunity to call upon

him, and try to make out who and what he was, and how he and Russell

came to be so intimately acquainted. I had scarcely stuck old Herodotus

back into his place on the shelf, however, when there came a gentle

tap at the door, and the little Bible-clerk made his appearance. All

diffidence and shyness had wholly vanished from his manner. There

was an earnest expression in his countenance which struck me even

before he spoke. I had scarcely time to utter the most commonplace

civility, when, without attempt at explanation or apology, he broke out

with--“Oh, Mr Hawthorne, have you seen Russell this morning?”

“No,” said I, thinking he might possibly have heard some false report

of the late accident--“but he was in my rooms last night, and none the

worse for his wetting.”

“Oh, yes, yes! I know that; but pray, come down and see him now--he is

very, very ill, I fear.”

“You don’t mean it? What on earth is the matter?”

“Oh! he has been in a high fever all last night! and they say he is

worse this morning--Dr Wilson and Mr Lane are both with him--and poor

Miss Russell!--he does not know her--not know his sister; and oh, Mr

Hawthorne, he must be _very_ ill; and they won’t let me go to him!” And

poor Smith threw himself into a chair, and fairly burst into tears.

I was very much distressed too: but, at the moment, I really believe I

felt more pity for the poor lad before me, than even apprehension for

my friend Russell. I went up to him, shook his hand, and begged him

to compose himself. Delirium, I assured him--and tried hard to assure

myself--was the usual concomitant of fever, and not at all alarming.

Russell had taken a chill, no doubt, from the unlucky business of the

last evening, but there could not be much danger in so short a time.

“And now, Smith,” said I, “just take a glass of wine, and you and I

will go down together, and I dare say we shall find him better by this

time.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you,” he replied; “you are very kind--very kind

indeed--no wine, thank you--I could not drink it: but oh! if they would

only let me see him. And poor Miss Russell! and no one to attend to him

but her!--but will you come down now directly?”

My own anxiety was not less than his, and in a very few minutes we

were at the door of Russell’s lodgings. The answer to our inquiries

was, that he was in much the same state, and that he was to be kept

perfectly quiet; the old housekeeper was in tears; and although she

said Dr Wilson told them he hoped there would be a change for the

better soon, it was evident that poor Russell was at present in

imminent danger.

I sent up my compliments to Miss Russell to offer my services in any

way in which they could be made available; but nothing short of the

most intimate acquaintance could have justified any attempt to see

her at present, and we left the house. I thought I should never have

got Smith from the door; he seemed thoroughly overcome. I begged him

to come with me back to my rooms--a Bible-clerk has seldom too many

friends in the University, and it seemed cruel to leave him by himself

in such evident distress of mind. Attached as I was to Russell myself,

his undisguised grief really touched me, and almost made me reproach

myself with being comparatively unfeeling. At any other time, I fear

it might have annoyed me to encounter as I did the inquisitive looks

of some of my friends, as I entered the College gates arm-in-arm with

my newly-found and somewhat strange-looking acquaintance. As it was,

the only feeling that arose in my mind was a degree of indignation

that any man should venture to throw a supercilious glance at him; and

if I longed to replace his shabby and ill-cut coat by something more

gentlemanly in appearance, it was for his sake, and not my own.

And now it was that, for the first time, I learnt the connexion that

existed between the Bible-clerk and the quondam gentleman-commoner.

Smith’s father had been for many years a confidential clerk in Mr

Russell’s bank; for Mr Russell’s bank it was solely, the Smith who had

been one of the original partners having died some two generations

back, though the name of the firm, as is not unusual, had been

continued without alteration. The clerk was a poor relation, in some

distant degree, of the some-time partner: his father, too, had been

a clerk before him. By strict carefulness, he had saved some little

money during his many years of hard work: and this, by special favour

on the part of Mr Russell, he had been allowed to invest in the bank

capital, and thereby to receive a higher rate of interest than he could

otherwise have obtained. The elder Smith’s great ambition--indeed it

was his only ambition--for the prosperity of the bank itself he looked

upon as a law of nature, which did not admit of the feeling of hope, as

being a fixed and immutable certainty--his ambition was to bring up his

son as a gentleman. Mr Russell would have given him a stool and a desk,

and he might have aspired hereafter to his father’s situation, which

would have assured him £250 per annum. But somehow the father did not

wish the son to tread in his own steps. Perhaps the close confinement,

and unrefreshing relaxations of a London clerk, had weighed heavily

upon his own youthful spirits: perhaps he was anxious to spare the

son of his old age--for, like a prudent man, he had not married until

late in life--from the unwholesome toils of the counting-house, varied

only too often by the still less wholesome dissipation of the evening.

At all events, his visions for him were not of annually increasing

salaries, and future independence: of probable partnerships, and

possible lord mayoralties; but of some cottage among green trees, far

away in the quiet country, where, even as a country parson, people

would touch their hats to him as they did to Mr Russell himself, and

where, when the time should come for superannuation and a pension--the

house had always behaved liberally to its old servants--his own last

days might happily be spent in listening to his son’s sermons, and

smoking his pipe--if such a thing were lawful--in the porch of the

parsonage. So while the principal was carefully training his heir

to enact the fashionable man at Oxford, and in due time to take his

place among the squires of England, and shunning, as if with a kind of

remorseful conscience, to make him a sharer in his own contaminating

speculations; the humble official too, but from far purer motives,

was endeavouring in his degree, perhaps unconsciously, to deliver his

boy from the snares of Mammon. And when Charles Russell was sent to

the University, many were the enquiries which Smith’s anxious parent

made, among knowing friends, about the expenses and advantages of an

Oxford education. And various, according to each individual’s sanguine

or saturnine temperament, were the answers he obtained, and tending

rather to his bewilderment than information. One intimate acquaintance

assured him, that the necessary expenses of an under-graduate _need_

not exceed a hundred pounds per annum: another--he was somewhat of

a sporting character--did not believe any young man could do the

thing like a gentleman under five. So Mr Smith would probably have

given up his darling project for his son in despair, if he had not

fortunately thought of consulting Mr Russell himself upon the point;

and that gentleman, though somewhat surprised at his clerk’s aspiring

notions, good-naturedly solved the difficulty as to ways and means, by

procuring for his son a Bible-clerk’s appointment at one of the Halls,

upon which he could support himself respectably, with comparatively

little pecuniary help from his friends. With his connexions and

interest, it was no great stretch of friendly exertion in behalf of an

old and trusted servant; but to the Smiths, father and son, both the

munificence which designed such a favour, and the influence which could

secure it, tended if possible to strengthen their previous conviction,

that the power and the bounty of the house of Russell came within

a few degrees of omnipotence. Even now, when recent events had so

fearfully shaken them from this delusion; when the father’s well-earned

savings had disappeared in the general wreck with the hoards of

wealthier creditors, and the son was left almost wholly dependent on

the slender proceeds of his humble office; even now, as he told me

the circumstances just mentioned, regret at the ruined fortunes of

his benefactors seemed in a great measure to overpower every personal

feeling. In the case of the younger Russell, indeed, this gratitude

was not misplaced. No sooner was he aware of the critical situation

of his father’s affairs, and the probability of their involving all

connected with him, than, even in the midst of his own harassing

anxieties, he turned his attention to the prospects of the young

Bible-clerk, whose means of support, already sufficiently narrow,

were likely to be further straitened in the event of a bankruptcy of

the firm. His natural good-nature had led him to take some little

notice of young Smith on his first entrance at the University, and

he knew his merits as a scholar to be very indifferent. The obscure

suburban boarding-school at which he had been educated, in spite

of its high-sounding name--“Minerva House,” I believe--was no very

sufficient preparation for Oxford. When the Greek and the washing are

both extras, at three guineas per annum, one clean shirt in the week,

and one lesson in _Delectus_, are perhaps as much as can reasonably be

expected. Poor Smith had, indeed, a fearful amount of uphill work, to

qualify himself even for his “little-go.” Charles Russell, not less

to his surprise than to his unbounded gratitude, inasmuch as he was

wholly ignorant of his motives for taking so much trouble, undertook to

assist and direct him in his reading: and Smith, when he had got over

his first diffidence, having a good share of plain natural sense, and

hereditary habits of plodding, made more rapid progress than might have

been expected. The frequent visits to Russell’s rooms, whose charitable

object neither I nor any one else could have guessed, had resulted in a

very safe pass through his first formidable ordeal, and he seemed now

to have little fear of eventual success for his degree, with a strong

probability of being privileged to starve upon a curacy thereafter.

But for Russell’s aid, he would, in all likelihood, have been remanded

from his first examination back to his father’s desk, to the bitter

mortification of the old man at the time, and to become an additional

burden to him on the loss at once of his situation and his little

capital.

Poor Smith! it was no wonder that, at the conclusion of his story,

interrupted constantly by broken expressions of gratitude, he wrung his

hands, and called Charles Russell the only friend he had in the world.

“And, oh! if he were to die! Do you think he will die?”

I assured him I hoped and trusted not, and with the view of relieving

his and my own suspense, though it was little more than an hour since

we had left his door, we went down again to make enquiries. The street

door was open, and so was that of the landlady’s little parlour, so we

walked in at once. She shook her head in reply to our inquiries. “Dr

Wilson has been up-stairs with him, sir, for the last hour nearly, and

he has sent twice to the druggist’s for some things, and I fancy he is

no better at all events.”

“How is Miss Russell?” I inquired.

“Oh, sir, she don’t take on much--not at all, as I may say; but she

don’t speak to nobody, and she don’t take nothing: twice I have carried

her up some tea, poor thing and she just tasted it because I begged

her, and she wouldn’t refuse me, I know--but, poor dear young lady! it

is very hard upon her, and she all alone like.”

“Will you take up my compliments--Mr Hawthorne--and ask if I can be of

any possible service?” said I, scarce knowing what to say or do. Poor

girl! she was indeed to be pitied; her father ruined, disgraced, and

a fugitive from the law; his only son--the heir of such proud hopes

and expectations once--lying between life and death; her only brother,

her only counsellor and protector, now unable to recognise or to speak

to her--and she so unused to sorrow or hardship, obliged to struggle

on alone, and exert herself to meet the thousand wants and cares of

illness, with the added bitterness of poverty.

The answer to my message was brought back by the old housekeeper,

Mrs Saunders. She shook her head, said her young mistress was very

much obliged, and would be glad if I would call and see her brother

tomorrow, when she hoped he would be better; “But oh, sir!” she added,

“He will never be better any more! I know the doctors don’t think so,

but I can’t tell her, poor thing--I try to keep her up, sir; but I do

wish some of her own friends were here--she won’t write to any body,

and I don’t know the directions”--and she stopped, for her tears were

almost convulsing her.

I could not remain to witness misery which I could do nothing to

relieve; so I took Smith by the arm--for he stood by the door

half-stupified, and proceeded back towards college. He had to mark the

roll at his own chapel that evening; so we parted at the top of the

street, after I had made him promise to come to breakfast with me in

the morning. Russell’s illness cast a universal gloom over the college

that evening; and when the answer to our last message, sent down as

late as we could venture to do, was still unfavourable, it was with

anxious anticipation that we awaited any change which the morrow might

bring.

The next day passed, and still Russell remained in the same state. He

as in a high fever, and either perfectly unconscious of all around him,

or talking in that incoherent and yet earnest strain, which is more

painful to those who have to listen to and to soothe than even the

total prostration of the reason. No one was allowed to see him; and

his professional attendants, though they held out hopes founded on his

youth and good constitution, acknowledged that every present symptom

was most unfavourable.

The earliest intelligence on the third morning was, that the patient

had passed a very bad night, and was much the same; but in the course

of an hour or two afterwards, a message came to me to say that Mr

Russell would be glad to see me. I rushed, rather than ran, down to his

lodgings, in a perfect exultation of hope, and was so breathless with

haste and excitement when I arrived there, that I was obliged to pause

a few moments to calm myself before I raised the carefully muffled

knocker. My joy was damped at once by poor Mrs Saunders’ mournful

countenance.

“Your master is better, I hope--is he not?” said I.

“I am afraid not, sir; but he is very quiet now: and he knew his poor

dear sister; and then he asked if any one had been to see him, and we

mentioned you, sir; and then he said he should like to see you very

much, and so Miss made bold to send to you--if you please to wait, sir,

I’ll tell her you are here.”

In a few moments she returned--Miss Russell would see me if I would

walk up.

I followed her into the little drawing-room, and there, very calm and

very pale, sat Mary Russell. Though her brother and myself had now so

long been constant companions, I had seen but very little of her; on

the very few evenings I had spent with Russell at his lodgings she

had merely appeared to make tea for us, had joined but little in the

conversation, and retired almost before the table was cleared. In her

position, this behaviour seemed but natural; and as, in spite of the

attraction of her beauty, there was a shade of that haughtiness and

distance of manner which we had all at first fancied in her brother,

I had begun to feel a respectful kind of admiration for Mary Russell,

tinged, I may now venture to admit--I was barely twenty at the

time--with a slight degree of awe. Her very misfortunes threw over her

a sort of sanctity. She was too beautiful not to rivet the gaze, too

noble and too womanly in her devotion to her brother not to touch the

affections, but too cold and silent--almost as it seemed too sad--to

love. Her brother seldom spoke of her; but when he did it was in a tone

which showed--what he did not care to conceal--his deep affection and

anxious care for her; he watched her every look and movement whenever

she was present; and if his love erred in any point, it was, that it

seemed possible it might be even too sensitive and jealous for her own

happiness.

The blinds were drawn close down, and the little room was very dark;

yet I could see at a glance the work which anguish had wrought upon

her in the last two days, and, though no tears were to be seen now,

they had left their traces only too plainly. She did not rise, or

trust herself to speak; but she held out her hand to me as if we had

been friends from childhood. And if thorough sympathy, and mutual

confidence, and true, but pure affection, make such friendship, then

surely we became so from that moment. I never thought Mary Russell cold

again--yet I did not dream of loving her--she was my sister in every

thing but the name.

I broke the silence of our painful meeting--painful as it was, yet

not without that inward throb of pleasure which always attends the

awakening of hidden sympathies. What I said I forget; what does one, or

can one say, at such moments, but words utterly meaningless, so far as

they affect to be an expression of what we feel? The hearts understand

each other without language, and with that we must be content.

“He knew me a little while ago,” said Mary Russell at last; “and asked

for you; and I knew you would be kind enough to come directly if I

sent.”

“Surely it must be a favourable symptom, this return of consciousness?”

“We will hope so: yes, I thought it was and oh! how glad I was! But Dr

Wilson does not say much, and I fear he thinks him weaker. I will go

now and tell him you are come.”

“You can see him now if you please,” she said when she returned; “he

seems perfectly sensible still and, when I said you were here, he

looked quite delighted.” She turned away, and, for the first time, her

emotion mastered her.

I followed her into her brother’s room. He did not look so ill as I

expected; but I saw with great anxiety, as I drew nearer his bed, that

his face was still flushed with fever, and his eye looked wild and

excited. He was evidently, however, at present free from delirium, and

recognised me at once. His sister begged him not to speak much, or ask

questions, reminding him of the physician’s strict injunctions with

regard to quiet.

“Dr Wilson forgets, my love, that it is as necessary at least for the

mind to be quiet as the tongue,” said Russell with an attempt to smile;

and then, after a pause, he added, as he took my hand, “I wanted to

see you, Hawthorne; I know I am in very great danger; and, once more,

I want to trouble you with a confidence. Nay, nothing very important;

and pray, don’t ask me, as I see you are going to do, not to tire

myself with talking: I know what I am going to say, and will try to say

it very shortly; but thinking is at least as bad for me as speaking.”

He paused again from weakness; Miss Russell had left the room. I made

no reply. He half rose, and pointed to a writing-desk on a small

table, with keys in the lock. I moved towards it, and opened it, as I

understood his gestures; and brought to him, at his request, a small

bundle of letters, from which he selected one, and gave it me to read.

It was a banker’s letter, dated some months back, acknowledging the

receipt of three hundred pounds to Russell’s credit, and enclosing the

following note:--

“SIR,--Messrs ---- are directed to inform you of the sum of £300

placed to your credit. You will be wrongly advised if you scruple

to use it. If at any time you are enabled, and desire it, it may be

repaid through the same channel.

“ONE OF YOUR FATHER’S CREDITORS.”

“I have never touched it,” said Russell, as I folded up the note.

“I should have feared you would not,” said I.

“But now,” he proceeded, “now things seem changed with me. I shall want

money--Mary will; and I shall draw upon this unseen charity; ay, and

gratefully. Poor Mary!”

“You are quite right, my dear Russell,” said I, eager to interrupt a

train of thought which I saw would be too much for him. “I will manage

all that for you, and you shall give me the necessary authority till

you get well again yourself,” I added in a tone meant to be cheerful.

He took no notice of my remark. “I fear,” said he, “I have not been

wise counsellor to my poor sister. She had kind offers from more than

one of our friends, and might have had a home more suited to her than

this has been, and I allowed her to choose to sacrifice all her own

prospects to mine!”

He turned his face away, and I knew that one painful thought besides

was in his mind--that they had been solely dependent on her little

income for his support at the University since his father’s failure.

“Russell,” said I gently, “this conversation can surely do no good; why

distress yourself and me unnecessarily? Come, I shall leave you now, or

your sister will scold me. Pray, for all our sakes, try to sleep; you

know how desirable it is, and how much stress Dr Wilson has laid upon

your being kept perfectly calm and quiet.”

“I will, Hawthorne, I will try; but oh, I have so much to think of!”

Distressed and anxious, I could only take my leave of him for the

present, feeling how much there was, indeed, in his circumstances to

make rest even more necessary, and more difficult to obtain, for the

mind than for the body.

I had returned to the sitting-room, and was endeavouring to give as

hopeful answers as I could to Miss Russell’s anxious inquiries as to

what I thought of her brother, when a card was brought up, with a

message that Mr Ormiston was below, and “would be very glad if he could

see Miss Russell for a few moments, at any hour she would mention, in

the course of the day.”

Ormiston! I started, I really did not know why. Miss Russell started

also, visibly; did she know why? Her back was turned to me at the

moment; she had moved, perhaps intentionally, the moment the message

became intelligible, so that I had no opportunity of watching the

effect it produced, which I confess I had an irrepressible anxiety to

do. She was silent, until I felt my position becoming awkward: I was

rising to take leave, which perhaps would have made hers even more so,

when, half turning round towards me, with a tone and gesture almost of

command, she said, “Stay!” and then, in reply to the servant, who was

still waiting, “Ask Mr Ormiston to walk up.”

I felt the few moments of expectation which ensued to be insufferably

embarrassing. I tried to persuade myself it was my own folly to think

them so. Why should Ormiston _not_ call at the Russells, under such

circumstances? As college tutor, he stood almost in the relation of

a natural guardian to Russell; Had he not at least as much right

to assume the privilege of a friend of the family as I had, with

the additional argument, that he was likely to be much more useful

in that capacity? He had known them longer, at all events, and any

little coolness between the brother and himself was not a matter, I

felt persuaded, to be remembered by him at such moment, or to induce

any false punctilio which might stand in the way of his offering his

sympathy and assistance, when required. But the impression on my mind

was strong--stronger, perhaps, than any facts within my knowledge

fairly warranted--that between Ormiston and Mary Russell there

either was, or had been, some feeling which, whether acknowledged or

unacknowledged--whether reciprocal or on one side only--whether crushed

by any of those thousand crosses to which such feelings, fragile as

they are precious, are liable, or only repressed by circumstances

and awaiting its developement--would make their meeting under such

circumstances not that of ordinary acquaintances. And once again I

rose, and would have gone; but again Mary Russell’s sweet voice--and

this time it was an accent of almost piteous entreaty, so melted and

subdued were its tones, as if her spirit was failing her--begged me to

remain--“I have something--something to consult you about--my brother.”

She stopped, for Ormiston’s step was at the door. I had naturally--not

from any ungenerous curiosity to scan her feelings--raised my eyes to

her countenance while she spoke to me, and could not but mark that

her emotion amounted almost to agony. Ormiston entered; whatever his

feelings were, he concealed them well; not so readily, however, could

he suppress his evident astonishment, and almost as evident vexation,

when he first noticed my presence: an actor in the drama for whose

appearance he was manifestly unprepared. He approached Miss Russell,

who never moved, with some words of ordinary salutation, but uttered in

a low and earnest tone, and offered his hand, which she took at once,

without any audible reply. Then turning to me, he asked if Russell were

any better? I answered somewhat indefinitely, and Miss Russell, to whom

he turned as for a reply, shook her head, and, sinking into a chair,

hid her face in her hands. Ormiston took a seat close by her, and after

a pause of a moment said,

“I trust your very natural anxiety for your brother makes you inclined

to anticipate more danger than really exists, Miss Russell: but I have

to explain my own intrusion upon you at such a moment”--and he gave me

a glance which was meant to be searching--“I called by the particular

request of the Principal, Dr Meredith.”

Miss Russell could venture upon no answer, and he went on, speaking

somewhat hurriedly and with embarrassment.

“Mrs Meredith has been from home some days, and the Principal himself

has the gout severely; he feared you might think it unkind their not

having called, and he begged me to be his deputy. Indeed he insisted on

my seeing you in person, to express his very sincere concern for your

brother’s illness, and to beg that you will so far honour him--consider

him sufficiently your friend, he said--as to send to his house for any

thing which Russell could either want or fancy, which, in lodgings,

there might be some difficulty in finding at hand. In one respect, Miss

Russell,” continued Ormiston in somewhat a more cheerful tone, “your

brother is fortunate in not being laid up within the college walls; we

are not very good nurses there, as Hawthorne can tell you, though we do

what we can; yet I much fear this watching and anxiety have been too

much for you.”

Her tears began to flow freely; there was nothing in Ormiston’s words,

but their tone implied deep feeling. Yet who, however indifferent,

could look upon her helpless situation, and not be moved? I walked to

the window, feeling terribly out of place where I was, yet uncertain

whether to go or stay; for my own personal comfort, I would sooner have

faced the collected anger of a whole common-room, called to investigate

my particular misdemeanours; but to take leave at this moment seemed

as awkward as to stay; besides, had not Miss Russell appeared almost

imploringly anxious for me to spare her a _tête-à-tête_?

“My poor brother is very, very ill, Mr Ormiston,” she said at

last, raising her face, from which every trace of colour had again

disappeared, and which seemed now as calm as ever. “Will you thank Dr

Meredith for me, and say I will without hesitation avail myself of his

most kind offers, if any thing should occur to make his assistance

necessary.”

“I can be of no use myself in any way?” said Ormiston with some

hesitation.

“I thank you, no,” she replied; and then, as if conscious that her tone

was cold, she added--“You are very kind: Mr Hawthorne was good enough

to say the same. Every one is very kind to us, indeed; but”--and here

she stopped again, her emotion threatening to master her; and Ormiston

and myself simultaneously took our leave.

Preoccupied as my mind had been by anxiety on Russell’s account, it

did not prevent a feeling of awkwardness when I found myself alone

with Mr Ormiston outside the door of his lodgings. It was impossible

to devise any excuse at the moment for turning off in a different

direction, as I felt very much inclined to do; for the little street

in which he lived was not much of a thoroughfare. The natural route

for both of us to take was that which led towards the High Street, for

a few hundred steps the other way would have brought us out into the

country, where it is not usual for either tutors or under-graduates to

promenade in cap and gown, as they do, to the great admiration of the

rustics, in our sister university. We walked on together, therefore,

feeling--I will answer at least for one of us--that it would be an

especial relief just then to meet the greatest bore with whom we had

any pretence of a speaking acquaintance, or pass any shop in which

we could frame the most threadbare excuse of having business, to cut

short the embarrassment of each other’s company. After quitting any

scene in which deep feelings have been displayed, and in which our

own have been not slightly interested, it is painful to feel called

upon to make any comment on what has passed; we feel ashamed to do

so in the strain and tone which would betray our own emotion, and we

have not the heart to do so carelessly or indifferently. I should have

felt this, even had I been sure that Ormiston’s feelings towards Mary

Russell had been nothing more than my own; whereas, in fact, I was

almost sure of the contrary; in which case it was possible that, in his

eyes, my own _locus standi_ in that quarter, surprised as I had been in

an apparently very confidential interview, might seem to require some

explanation which would be indelicate to ask for directly, and which

it might not mend matters if I were to give indirectly without being

asked. So we proceeded some paces up the little quiet street, gravely

and silently, neither of us speaking a word. At last Ormiston asked me

if I had seen Russell, and how I thought him? adding, without waiting

for a reply, “Dr Wilson, I fear from what he told me, thinks but badly

of him.”

“I am very sorry to hear you say so,” I replied; and then ventured to

remark how very wretched it would be for his sister, in the event of

his growing worse, to be left at such a time so utterly helpless and

alone.

He was silent for some moments. “Some of her friends,” he said at last,

“ought to come down; she must have friends, I know, who would come if

they were sent for. I wish Mrs Meredith were returned--she might advise

her.”

He spoke rather in soliloquy than as addressing me, and I did not feel

called upon to make any answer. The next moment we arrived at the turn

of the street, and, by what seemed a mutual impulse, wished each other

good-morning.

I went straight down to Smith’s rooms, at ---- Hall, to get him to come

and dine with me; for I pitied the poor fellow’s forlorn condition,

and considered myself in some degree bound to supply Russell’s place

towards him. A Bible-clerk’s position in the University is always

more or less one of mortification and constraint. It is true that the

same academical degree, the same honours--if he can obtain them--the

same position in after life--all the solid advantages of a University

education, are open to him, as to other men; but, so long as his

undergraduateship lasts, he stands in a very different position from

other men, and he feels it--feels it, too, through three or four of

those years of life when such feelings are most acute, and when that

strength of mind which is the only antidote--which can measure men by

themselves and not by their accidents--is not as yet matured either in

himself or in the society of which he becomes a member. If, indeed,

he be a decidedly clever man, and has the opportunity early in his

career of showing himself to be such, then there is good sense and good

feeling enough--let us say, to the honour of the University, there is

sufficient of that true _esprit du corps_, a real consciousness of the

great objects for which men are thus brought together--to ensure the

acknowledgment from all but the most unworthy of its members, that a

scholar is always a gentleman. But if he be a man of only moderate

abilities, and known only as a Bible-clerk, then, the more he is of a

gentleman by birth and education, the more painful does his position

generally become. There are not above two or three in residence

in most colleges, and their society is confined almost wholly to

themselves. Some old schoolfellow, indeed, or some man who “knows him

at home,” holding an independent rank in college, may occasionally

venture upon the condescension of asking him to wine--even to meet a

friend or two with whom he can take such a liberty; and even then, the

gnawing consciousness that he is considered an inferior--though not

treated as such--makes it a questionable act of kindness. Among the

two or three of his own table, one is the son of a college butler,

another has been for years usher at a preparatory school; he treats

them with civility, they treat him with deference; but they have no

tastes or feelings in common. At an age, therefore, which most of

all seeks and requires companionship, he has no companions; and the

period of life which should be the most joyous, becomes to him almost

a purgatory. Of course, the radical and the leveller will say at once,

“Ay, this comes of your aristocratic distinctions; they ought not to

be allowed in universities at all.” Not so: it comes of human nature;

the distinction between a dependent and an independent position will

always be felt in all societies, mark it outwardly as little as you

will. Humiliation, more or less, is a penalty which poverty must

always pay. These humbler offices in the University were founded by a

charity as wise as benevolent, which has afforded to hundreds of men of

talent, but of humble means, an education equal to that of the highest

noble in the land, and, in consequence, a position and usefulness in

after life, which otherwise they could never have hoped for. And if

the somewhat servile tenure by which they are held, (which in late

years has in most colleges been very much relaxed,) were wholly done

away with, there is reason to fear the charity of the founders would

be liable to continual abuse, by their being bestowed upon many who

required no such assistance. As it is, this occurs too often; and it

is much to be desired that the same regulations were followed in their

distribution, throughout the University, which some colleges have long

most properly adopted: namely, that the appointment should be bestowed

on the successful candidate after examination, strict regard being

had to the circumstances of all the parties before they are allowed

to offer themselves. It would make their position far more definite

and respectable, because all would then be considered honourable to a

certain degree, as being the reward of merit; instead of which, too

often, they are convenient items of patronage in the hands of the

Principal and Fellows, the nomination to them depending on private

interest, which by no means ensuring the nominee’s being a gentleman by

birth, while it is wholly careless of his being a scholar by education,

and tends to lower the general standing of the order in the University.

This struck me forcibly in Smith’s case. Poor fellow! with an

excellent heart and a great deal of sound common sense, he had neither

the breeding nor the talent to make a gentleman of. I doubt if an

University education was any real boon to him. It ensured him four

years of hard work--harder, perhaps, than if he had sat at a desk all

the time--without the society of any of his own class and habits, and

with the prospect of very little remuneration ultimately. I think he

might have been very happy in his own sphere, and I do not see how he

could be happy at Oxford. And whether he or the world in general ever

profited much by the B.A. which he eventually attached to his name, is

a point at least doubtful.

I could not get him to come and dine with me in my own college. He knew

his own position, as it seemed, and was not ashamed of it; in fact, in

his case, it could not involve any consciousness of degradation; and I

am sure his only reason for refusing my invitations of that kind was,

that he thought it possible my dignity might be compromised by so open

an association with him. He would come over to my rooms in the evening

to tea, he said; and he came accordingly. When I told him in the

morning that Russell had inquired very kindly after him, he was much

affected; but it had evidently been a comfort to him to feel that he

was not forgotten, and during the hour or two which we spent together

in the evening, he seemed much more cheerful.

“Perhaps they will let me see him to-morrow, if he is better?” he said,

with an appealing look to me. I assured him I would mention his wish to

Russell, and his countenance at once brightened up, as if he thought

only his presence were needed to ensure our friend’s recovery.

But the next morning all our hopes were dashed again; delirium had

returned as had been feared, and the feverish symptoms seemed to gain

strength rather than abate. Bleeding, and the usual remedies had been

had recourse to already to a perilous extent, and in Russell’s present

reduced state, no further treatment of the kind could be ventured upon.

“All we can do now, sir,” said Dr Wilson, “is little more than to let

nature take her course. I _have known_ such cases recover.” I did not

ask to see Mary Russell that day; for what could I have answered to

her fears and inquiries? But I thought of Ormiston’s words; surely she

ought to have some friend--some one of her own family, or some known

and tried companion of her own sex, would surely come to her at a

moment’s notice, did they but know of her trying situation. If--if her

brother were to die--she surely would not be left here among strangers,

quite alone? Yet I much feared, from what had escaped him at our last

interview, that they had both incurred the charge of wilfulness for

refusing offers of assistance at the time of their father’s disgrace

and flight, and that having, contrary to the advice of their friends,

and perhaps imprudently, taken the step they had done in coming to

Oxford, Mary Russell, with something of her brother’s spirit, had made

up her mind now, however heavy and unforeseen the blow that was to

fall, to suffer all in solitude and silence. For Ormiston, too, I felt

with an interest and intensity that was hourly increasing. I met him

after morning chapel, and though he appeared intentionally to avoid any

conversation with me, I knew by his countenance that he had heard the

unfavourable news of the morning; and it could be no common emotion

that had left its visible trace upon features usually so calm and

impassible.

From thoughts of this nature, indulged in the not very appropriate

locality of the centre of the quadrangle, I was roused by the

good-humoured voice of Mrs Meredith--“our governess,” as we used to

call her--who, with the doctor himself, was just then entering the

College, and found me right in the line of her movements towards the

door of “the lodgings.” I was not until that moment aware of her

return, and altogether was considerably startled as she addressed me

with--“Oh! how do you do, Mr Hawthorne? you young gentlemen don’t take

care of yourselves, you see, when I am away--I am so sorry to hear this

about poor Mr Russell! Is he so very ill? Dr Meredith is just going to

see him.”

I coloured up, I dare say, for it was a trick I was given to in those

days, and, in the confusion, replied rather to my own thoughts than to

Mrs Meredith’s question.

“Mrs Meredith! I really beg your pardon,” I first stammered out as a

very necessary apology, for I had nearly stumbled over her--“May I say

how very glad I am you are returned, on Miss Russell’s account--I am

sure ”----

“Really, Mr Hawthorne, it is very natural I suppose, but you gentlemen

seem to expend your whole sympathy upon the young lady, and forget the

brother altogether! Mr Ormiston actually took the trouble to write to

me about her”----

“My dear!” interposed the Principal.

“Nay, Dr Meredith, see how guilty Mr Hawthorne looks! and as to Mr

Ormiston”--“Well, never mind,” (the doctor was visibly checking his

lady’s volubility,) “I love the poor dear girl so much myself, that I

am really grieved to the heart for her. I shall go down and see her

directly, and make her keep up her spirits. Dr Wilson is apt to make

out all the bad symptoms he can--I shall try if I can’t cure Mr Russell

myself, after all; a little proper nursing in those cases is worth a

whole staff of doctors--and, as to this poor girl, what can she know

about it? I dare say she sits crying her eyes out, poor thing, and

doing nothing--_I’ll_ see about it. Why, I wouldn’t lose Mr Russell

from the college for half the young men in it--would I, Dr Meredith?”

I bowed, and they passed on. Mrs Principal, if somewhat pompous

occasionally, was a kind-hearted woman; I believe an hour scarcely

elapsed after her return to Oxford, before she was in Russell’s

lodgings, ordering every thing about as coolly as if it were in her

own house, and all but insisting on seeing the patient and prescribing

herself for him in spite of all professional injunctions to the

contrary. The delirium passed off again, and though it left Russell

sensibly weaker, so weak, that when I next was admitted to see him

with Smith, he could do little more than feebly grasp our hands, yet

the fever was evidently abated; and in the course of the next day,

whether it was to be attributed to the remedies originally used, or to

his own youth and good constitution, or to Mrs Meredith’s experienced

directions in the way of nursing, and the cheerful spirit which that

good lady, in spite of a little fussness, succeeded generally in

producing around her, there was a decided promise of amendment, which

happily each succeeding hour tended gradually to fulfil. Ormiston had

been unremitting in his inquiries; but I believe had never since sought

an interview either with the brother or sister. I took advantage of the

first conversation Russell was able to hold with me, to mention how

very sincerely I believed him to have felt the interest he expressed.

A moment afterwards, I felt almost sorry I had mentioned the name--it

was the first time I had done so during Russell’s illness. He almost

started up in bed, and his face glowed again with more than the flush

of fever, as he caught up my words.

“Sincere, did you say? Ormiston sincere! You don’t know the man as I

do. Inquired here, did he? What right has he to intrude his”----

“Hush, my dear Russell,” I interposed, really almost alarmed at his

violence. “Pray, don’t excite yourself--I think you do him great

injustice; but we will drop the subject, if you please.”

“I tell you, Hawthorne, if you knew all, you would despise him as much

as I do.”

It is foolish to argue with an invalid--but really even my friendship

for Russell would not allow me to bear in silence an attack so

unjustifiable, as it seemed to me, on the character of a man who had

every claim to my gratitude and respect. I replied therefore, somewhat

incautiously, that perhaps I did know a little more than Russell

suspected.

He stared at me with a look of bewilderment. “What do you know?” he

asked quickly.

It was too late to hesitate or retract. I had started an unfortunate

subject; but I knew Russell too well to endeavour now to mislead him.

“I have no right perhaps to say I know any thing; but I have gathered

from Ormiston’s manner, that he has very strong reasons for the anxiety

he has shown on your account. I will not say more.”

“And how do you know this? Has Mr Ormiston dared ”----

“No, no, Russell,” said I, earnestly; “see how unjust you are, in

this instance.” I wished to say something to calm him, and it would

have been worse than useless to say any thing but the truth. I saw he

guessed to what I alluded; and I gave him briefly my reasons for what I

thought, not concealing the interview with his sister, at which I had

unintentionally been present.

It was a very painful scene. When he first understood that Ormiston

had sought the meeting, his temper, usually calm, but perhaps now

tried by such long hours of pain and heaviness, broke out with bitter

expressions against both. I told him, shortly and warmly, that such

remarks towards his sister were unmanly and unkind; and then he cried,

like a chidden and penitent child, till his remorse was as painful to

look upon as his passion. “Mary! my own Mary! even you, Hawthorne, know

and feel her value better than I do! I for whom she has borne so much.”

“I am much mistaken,” said I, “if Ormiston has not learned to

appreciate her even yet more truly. And why not?”

“Leave me now,” he said; “I am not strong enough to talk; but if you

wish to know what cause I have to speak as I have done of your friend

Ormiston, you shall hear again.”

So exhausted did he seem by the excess of feeling which I had so

unfortunately called forth, that I would not see him again for some

days, contenting myself with learning that no relapse had taken place,

and that he was still progressing rapidly towards recovery.

I had an invitation to visit my aunt again during the Easter vacation,

which had already commenced, and had only been prevented from leaving

Oxford by Russell’s alarming state. As soon, therefore, as all danger

was pronounced over, I prepared to go up to town at once, and my next

visit to Russell was in fact to wish him good-by for two or three

weeks. He was already sitting up, and fast regaining strength. He

complained of having seen so little of me lately, and asked me if I

had seen his sister. “I had not noticed it until the last few days,”

he said--“illness makes one selfish, I suppose; but I think Mary looks

thin and ill--very different from what she did a month back.”

But watching and anxiety, as I told him, were not unlikely to produce

that effect; and I advised him strongly to take her somewhere for a

few weeks for change of air and scene. “It will do you both good,” I

said; “and you can draw another L.50 from your unknown friend for that

purpose; it cannot be better applied, and I should not hesitate for a

moment.”

“I would not,” he replied, “if I wanted money; but I do not. Do you

know that Dr Wilson would take no fee whatever from Mary during the

whole of his attendance; and when I asked him to name some sufficient

remuneration, assuring him I could afford it, he said he would never

forgive me if I ever mentioned the subject again. So what remains

of the fifty you drew for me, will amply suffice for a little trip

somewhere for us. And I quite agree with you in thinking it desirable,

on every account, that Mary should move from Oxford--perhaps

altogether--for one reason, to be out of the way of a friend of yours.”

“Ormiston?”

“Yes, Ormiston; he called here again since I saw you, and wished to see

me; but I declined the honour. Possibly,” he added bitterly, “as we

have succeeded in keeping out of jail here, he thinks Mary has grown

rich again.” And then he went on to tell me, how, in the days of his

father’s reputed wealth, Ormiston had been a constant visitor at their

house in town, and how his attentions to his sister had even attracted

his father’s attention, and led to his name being mentioned as likely

to make an excellent match with the rich banker’s daughter. “My father

did not like it,” he said, “for he had higher views for her, as was

perhaps excusable--though I doubt if he would have refused Mary any

thing. I did not like it for another reason: because I knew all the

time how matters really stood, and that any man who looked for wealth

with my sister would in the end be miserably disappointed. What Mary’s

own feelings were, and what actually passed between her and Ormiston,

I never asked; but she knew my views on the subject, and would, I

am certain, never have accepted any man under the circumstances in

which she was placed, and which she could not explain. I did hope and

believe, however, then, that there was sufficient high principle about

Ormiston to save Mary from any risk of throwing away her heart upon a

man who would desert her upon a change of fortune. I think he loved

her at the time--as well as such men as he can love any one; but from

the moment the crash came--Ormiston, you know, was in town at the

time--there was an end of every thing. It was an opportunity for a man

to show feeling if he had any; and though I do not affect much romance,

I almost think that, in such a case, even an ordinary heart might have

been warmed into devotion; but Ormiston--cold, cautious, calculating as

he is--I could almost have laughed at the sudden change that came over

him when he heard the news. He pretended, indeed, great interest for

us, and certainly did seem cut up about it; but he had not committed

himself, I conclude, and took care to retreat in time. Thank Heaven!

even if Mary did ever care for him, she is not the girl to break her

heart for a man who proves so unworthy of her regard. But why he should

insist on inflicting his visits upon us now, is what I cannot make out,

and what I will not endure.”

I listened with grief and surprise. I knew well, that not even the

strong prejudice which I believed Russell to have always felt against

Ormiston, would tempt him to be guilty of misrepresentation: and,

again, I gave him credit for too much penetration to have been easily

deceived. Yet I could not bring myself all at once to think so ill of

Ormiston. He had always been considered in pecuniary matters liberal

almost to a fault, that he really loved Mary Russell, I felt more

than ever persuaded; and, at my age, it was hard to believe that a

few thousand pounds could affect any man’s decision in such a point,

even for a moment. Why, the very fact of her being poor and friendless

was enough to make one fall in love with such a girl at once! So when

Russell, after watching the effect of his disclosure, misconstruing my

silence, proceeded to ask somewhat triumphantly--“_Now_, what say you

of Mr Ormiston?”--I answered at once, that I was strongly convinced

there was a mistake.

“Ay,” rejoined he with a sneering laugh; “on Ormiston’s part, you mean;

decidedly there was.”

“I mean,” said I, “there has been some misunderstanding, which time may

yet explain: I do not, and will not believe him capable of what you

impute to him. Did you ever ask your sister for a full and unreserved

explanation of what has passed between them?”

“Never; but I know that she has shunned all intercourse with him as

carefully as I have, and that his recently renewed civilities have

given her nothing but pain.” My own observation certainly tended to

confirm this: So, changing the subject--for it was one on which I had

scarce any right to give an opinion, still less offer advice, asked

whether I could do any thing for him in town; and, after exchanging

a cordial good-by with Miss Russell, in whose appearance I was sorry

to see confirmation of her brother’s fears for her health, I took my

leave, and the next morning saw me on the top of “The Age,” on my way

to town.

There I received a letter from my father, in which he desired me to

take the opportunity of calling upon his attorney, Mr Rushton, in order

to have some leases and other papers read and explained to me, chiefly

matters of form, but which would require my signature upon my coming of

age. It concluded with the following P.S.:--

“I was sorry to hear of your friend’s illness, and trust he will now do

very well. Bring him down with you at Christmas, if you can. I hear,

by the way, there is a _Miss_ Russell in the case--a very fascinating

young lady, whom you never mention at all--a fact which your mother,

who is up to all those things, says is very suspicious. All I can say

is, if she is as good a girl as her mother was before her--I knew her

well once--you may bring her down with you too, if you like.”

How very unlucky it is that the home authorities seldom approve of

any little affairs of the kind except those of which one is perfectly

innocent! Now, if I _had_ been in love with Mary Russell, the

governor would, in the nature of things, have felt it his duty to be

disagreeable.

I put off the little business my father alluded to day after day, to

make way for more pleasant engagements, until my stay in town was

drawing to a close. Letters from Russell informed me of his having left

Oxford for Southampton, where he was reading hard, and getting quite

stout; but he spoke of his sister’s health in a tone that alarmed me,

though he evidently was trying to persuade himself that a few weeks’

sea-air would quite restore it. At last I devoted a morning to call on

Mr Rushton, whom I found at home, though professing, as all lawyers do,

to be full of business. He made my acquaintance as politely as if I had

been the heir-expectant of an earldom, instead of the very moderate

amount of acres which had escaped sale and subdivision in the Hawthorne

family. In fact, he seemed a very good sort of fellow, and we ran over

the parchments together very amicably--I almost suspected he was

cheating me, he seemed so very friendly, but therein I did him wrong.

“And now, my dear sir,” continued he, as we shut up the last of them,

“will you dine with me to-day? Let me see; I fear I can’t say before

seven, for I have a great deal of work to get through. Some bankruptcy

business, about which I have taken some trouble,” he continued, rubbing

his hands, “and which we shall manage pretty well in the end, I fancy.

By the way, it concerns some friends of yours, too: is not Mr Ormiston

of your college? Ay, I thought he was; he is two thousand pounds richer

than he fancied himself yesterday.”

“Really?” said I, somewhat interested; “how, may I ask?”

“Why, you see, when Russell’s bank broke--bad business that--we all

thought the first dividend--tenpence-halfpenny in the pound, I believe

it was--would be the final one: however, there are some foreign

securities which, when they first came into the hands of the assignees,

were considered of no value at all, but have gone up wonderfully in the

market just of late, so that we have delayed finally closing accounts

till we could sell them to such advantage as will leave some tolerable

pickings for the creditors after all.”

“Had Ormiston money in Mr Russell’s bank, then, at the time?”

“Oh, yes: something like eight thousand pounds: not all his own,

though: five thousand he had in trust for some nieces of his, which

he had unluckily just sold out of the funds, and placed with Russell,

while he was engaged in making arrangements for a more profitable

investment; the rest was his own.”

“He lost it all, then?”

“All but somewhere about three hundred pounds, as it appeared at the

time. What an excellent fellow he is! You know him well, I dare say.

They tell me that he pays the interest regularly to his nieces for

their money out of his own income still.”

I made no answer to Mr Rushton at the moment, for a communication so

wholly unexpected had awakened a new set of ideas, which I was busily

following out in my mind. I seemed to hold in my hands the clue to a

good deal of misunderstanding and unhappiness. My determination was

soon taken to go to Southampton, see Russell at once, and tell him what

I had just heard, and of which I had no doubt he had hitherto been

as ignorant as myself. I was the rather induced to take this course,

as I felt persuaded that Miss Russell’s health was suffering rather

from mental than bodily causes; and, in such a case, a great deal of

mischief is done in a short time. I would leave town at once.

My purse was in the usual state of an under-graduate’s at the close of

a visit to London; so, following up the train of my own reflections, I

turned suddenly upon Mr Rushton, who was again absorbed in his papers,

and had possibly forgotten my presence altogether, and attacked him

with--

“My dear sir, can you lend me ten pounds?”

“Certainly,” said Mr Rushton, taking, off his spectacles, and feeling

in his pockets, at the same time looking at me with some little

curiosity,-- “certainly--with great pleasure.”

“I beg your pardon for taking such a liberty,” said I, apologetically;

“but I find I must leave town to-night.”

“To-night!” said the lawyer, looking still more inquiringly at me; “I

thought you were to dine with me?”

“I cannot exactly explain to you at this moment, sir, my reasons; but

I have reasons, and I think sufficient ones, though they have suddenly

occurred to me.”

I pocketed the money, leaving Mr Rushton to speculate on the

eccentricities of Oxonians as he pleased, and a couple of hours found

me on the Southampton mail.

The Russells were surprised at my sudden descent upon them, but

welcomed me cordially; and even Mary’s pale face did not prevent my

being in excellent spirits. As soon as I could speak to Russell by

himself, I told him what I had heard from Mr Rushton.

He never interrupted me, but his emotion was evident. When he did

speak, it was in an altered and humbled voice.

“I never inquired,” he said, “who my father’s creditors were--perhaps I

ought to have done so; but I thought the knowledge could only pain me.

I see it all now; how unjust, how ungrateful I have been! Poor Mary!”

We sat down, and talked over those points in Ormiston’s conduct

upon which Russell had put so unfavourable a construction. It was

quite evident, that a man who could act with so much liberality and

self-denial towards others, could have had no interested motives in his

conduct with regard to Mary Russell; and her brother was now as eager

to express his confidence in Ormiston’s honour and integrity, as he was

before hasty in misjudging him.

Where all parties are eager for explanation, matters are soon

explained. Russell had an interview with his sister, which brought

her to the breakfast table the next morning with blushing cheeks and

brightened eyes. _Her_ misgivings, if she had any, were easily set at

rest. He then wrote to Ormiston a letter full of generous apologies and

expressions of his high admiration of his conduct, which was answered

by that gentleman in person by return of post. How Mary Russell and he

met, or what they said, must ever be a secret, for no one was present

but themselves. But all embarrassment was soon over, and we were a very

happy party for the short time we remained at Southampton together;

for, feeling that my share in the matter was at an end--a share which

I contemplated with some little self-complacency--I speedily took my

departure.

If I have not made Ormiston’s conduct appear in as clear colours to

the reader as it did to ourselves, I can only add, that the late

misunderstanding seemed a painful subject to all parties, and that

the mutual explanations were rather understood than expressed. The

anonymous payment to Russell’s credit at the Bank was no longer a

mystery: it was the poor remains of the College Tutor’s little fortune,

chiefly the savings of his years of office--the bulk of which had

been lost through the fault of the father--generously devoted to meet

the necessities of the son. That he would have offered Mary Russell

his heart and hand at once when she was poor, as he hesitated to do

when she was rich, none of us for a moment doubted, had not his own

embarrassments, caused by the failure of the bank, and the consequent

claims of his orphan nieces, to replace whose little income he had

contracted all his own expenses, made him hesitate to involve the woman

he loved in an imprudent marriage.

They were married, however, very soon--and still imprudently, the

world said, and my good aunt among the rest; for, instead of waiting

an indefinite time for a good college living to fall in, Ormiston took

the first that offered, a small vicarage of £300 a-year, intending to

add to his income by taking pupils. However, fortune sometimes loves

to have a laugh at the prudent ones, and put to the rout all their

wise prognostications; for, during Ormiston’s “year of grace”--while

he still virtually held his fellowship, though he had accepted the

living--our worthy old Principal died somewhat suddenly, and regret

at his loss only gave way to the universal joy of every individual in

the college, (except, I suppose, any disappointed aspirants,) when Mr

Ormiston was elected almost unanimously to the vacant dignity.

* * * * *

Mr Russell the elder has never returned to England. On the mind of such

a man, after the first blow, and the loss of his position in the world,

the disgrace attached to his name had comparatively little effect. He

lives in some small town in France, having contrived, with his known

_clever management_, to keep himself in comfortable circumstances, and

his best friends can only strive to forget his existence, rather than

wish for his return. His son and daughter pay him occasional visits,

for their affection survives his disgrace, and forgets his errors.

Charles Russell took a first class, after delaying his examination a

couple of terms, owing to his illness, and is now a barrister, with a

reputation for talent, but as yet very little business. However I hear

the city authorities had the impudence to seize some of the college

plate in discharge of a disputed claim for rates, and that Russell is

retained as one of the counsel in an action of replevin, I trust he

will begin a prosperous career, by contributing to win the cause for

the “gown.”

I spent a month with Dr and Mrs Ormiston at their vicarage in the

country, before the former entered upon his official residence as

Principal; and can assure the reader that, in spite of ten--it may be

more--years of difference in age, they are the happiest couple I ever

saw. I may almost say, the only happy couple I ever saw, most of my

married acquaintance appearing at the best only _contented_ couples,

not drawing their happiness so exclusively from each other as suits

my notion of what such a tie ought to be. Of course, I do not take my

own matrimonial experience into account; the same principle of justice

which forbids a man to give evidence in his own favour, humanely

excusing him from making any admission which may criminate himself.

Mrs Ormiston is as beautiful, as amiable, as ever, and has lost all

the reserve and sadness which, in her maiden days, over-shadowed her

charms; and so sincere was and is my admiration of her person and

character, and so warmly was I in the habit of expressing it, that

I really believe my dilating upon her attractions used to make Mrs

Francis Hawthorne somewhat jealous, until she had the happiness to make

her acquaintance, and settled the point by falling in love with the

lady herself.

LETTERS ON ENGLISH HEXAMETERS.

LETTER II.

DEAR MR EDITOR--I should like to offer you some more of my criticisms

on the hexameters which have been written in English, and, by your

good leave, will try to do so at some future time. But there are

probably some of your readers who entertain the prejudices against

English hexameters which we often hear from English critics of the last

generation. I cannot come to any understanding with these readers about

special hexameters, till I have said something of these objections

to hexameters in general. One of these objections I tried to dispose

of in a former missive; namely, that “we cannot have good hexameters

in English, because we have so few spondees.” There are still other

erroneous doctrines commonly entertained relative to this matter,

which may be thus briefly expressed;--that in hexameters we adopt a

difference of long and short syllables, such as does not regulate other

forms of English versification; and that the versification itself--the

movement of the hexameter--is borrowed from Greek and Latin poetry.

Now, in opposition to these opinions, I am prepared to show that our

English hexameters suppose no other relations of strong and weak

syllables than those which govern our other kinds of verse;--and that

the hexameter movement is quite familiar to the native English ear.

The first of these truths, I should have supposed to be, by this

time, generally acknowledged among all writers and readers of English

verse: if it had not been that I have lately seen, in some of our

hexametrists, a reference to a difference of _long_, and _short_, as

something which we ought to have, in addition to the differences of

strong and weak syllables, in order to make our hexameters perfect. One

of these writers has taken the model hexameter--

“In the hexameter rises the fountain’s silvery column;”

and has objected to it that the first syllable of _column_ is _short_.

But, my dear sir, it is not shorter than the first syllable of

_collar_, or of the Latin _collum_! The fact is, that in hexameters,

as in all other English verses, the ear knows nothing of _long_ and

_short_ as the foundation of verse. All verse, to an English ear, is

governed by the succession of _strong_ and _weak_ syllables. Take a

stanza of Moore’s:--

“_When_ in _death_ I shall _calm_ re_cline_,

O _bear_ my _heart_ to my _mis_tress _dear_.

_Tell_ her it _lived_ upon _smiles_ and _wine_,

Of the _bright_est _hue_ while it _ling_er’d _here_.”

I have marked the strong syllables, which stand in the place of long

ones, so far as the actual _existence_ of verse is concerned; though

no doubt the _smoothness_ of the verse is promoted by having the light

syllables short also, that they may glide rapidly away. But this, I

say, though favourable to smoothness, is not essential to verse: thus

the syllable _death_, though strong, is short; _I_ and _while_, though

weak, are long.

Now this alternation, in a certain order, of strong and weak syllables,

is the essential condition of all English verse, and of hexameters

among the rest. Long and short syllables, to English ears, are

superseded in their effect by strong and weak accents; and even when

we read Greek and Latin verses, so far as we make the versification

perceptible, we do so by putting strong accents on the long syllables.

The English ear has no sense of any versification which is not thus

constructed.

I had imagined that all this was long settled in the minds of all

readers of poetry; and that all notion of syllables in English being

long, for purposes of versification, because they contain a long vowel

or a diphthong, or a vowel before two consonants, had been obliterated

ages ago. I knew, indeed, that the first English hexametrists had tried

to conform themselves to the Latin rules of quantity. Thus, as we learn

from Spenser, they tried to make the second syllable of _carpenter_

long; and constructed their verses so that they would _scan_ according

to Latin rules. Such are Surry’s hexameters; for instance:--

“Unto a caitiff wretch whom long affliction holdeth,

Grant yet, grant yet a look to the last monument of his anguish.”

But this made their task extremely difficult, without bringing any gain

which the ear could recognise; and I believe that the earlier attempts

to naturalize the hexameter in England failed mainly in consequence of

their being executed under these severe conditions, which prevented

all facility and flow in the expression, and gave the popular ear no

pleasure.

The successful German hexametrists have rejected all regard to the

classical rules of quantity of syllables; and have, I conceive,

shown us plainly that this is the condition of success in such an

undertaking. Take, for instance, the beginning of _Hermann und

Dorothea_:--

“Und so sass das trauliche Paar, sich unter den Thorweg

Ueber das wander de Volk mit mancher Bemerkung ergötgend

Endlich aber began der wüedige Hansfrau, und sagte

Sept! dort kommt der Prediger her; es kommt auch der Nachbar.”

The penultimate dactyls in these lines, “_unter dem_ Thorweg,”

“Be_merkung er_götgend,” “_Hansfrau und_ sagte,” “_kommt auch der_

Nachbar,” have, in the place of short syllables, syllables which

must be long, if any distinction of long and short, depending upon

consonants and dipthongs, be recognised; but yet these are good and

orderly dactyls, because in each we have a strong syllable followed by

two weak ones. If we call such trissyllable feet _dactyls_, and in the

same way describe other feet by their corresponding names in Greek and

Latin verse, _spondees_, _trochees_, and the like, we shall be able

to talk in an intelligible manner about English verse in general, and

English hexameters in particular.

And I have now to show, in the second place, that English hexameters

are readily accepted by the native ear, without any condition of

discipline in Greek and Latin verse. I do not mean to say that

hexameters have not a peculiar character among our forms of verse; and

I should like to try to explain, on some future occasion, the mode in

which the recollection of Homer and Virgil, in Greek and Latin, affects

and modifies the pleasure which we receive from hexameter poems in

German and English. But I say that, without any such reference, poems

written in rigorous hexameters will be recognised by a common reader as

easy current verse.

In order to bring out this point clearly, you must allow me, Mr Editor,

to make my quotations with _various readings_ of my own, which are

requisite to exemplify the forms of verse of which I speak.

I begin by talking of “dactylics,” in spite of the _Antijacobin_.

Dactylic measures are very familiar to our ears, and congenial to the

genius of our versification. These lines are dactylics:--

“Oh | know ye the | land where the | cypress and | myrtle

Are | emblems of | deeds that are | done in their | clime?”

But the lines may be also regarded as anapæstics:--

“Oh know | ye the land | &c.

Are em | blems of deeds | &c.

Where the rage | of the vul | ture, the love | of the turtle,|

Now melt | into sor | row, now mad | den to crime.|”

In all these cases, the line begins with a weak syllable; and if the

lines are regarded as dactylics, this syllable must be taken as a

fragment of foot. When the line begins with a strong syllable, the

dactylic character is more decided: as if the lines were,--

Know ye the land of the cypress and myrtle?

Emblems of deeds that are done in their clime?

Now, in such examples, along with the trissyllable feet, dissyllable

feet are often mixed, as their metrical equivalents: as

“_When in_ | death I shall | _calm re_ | cline,

O | _bear my_ | heart to my | _mistress_ | dear;

Tell her it | lived upon | _smiles and_ | wine

Of the | _brightest_ | hue, while it | _lingered_ | here.”

We may observe that there is, in this example, a kind of symmetry shown

in preserving the dissyllable feet always in the second place, which is

not without its effect on the ear. Some of these feet may be made two

or three syllables at pleasure, as _linger’d_ or _lingerèd_. I will add

the next stanza as a further example:--

“Bid her not | _shed one_ | _tear of_ | sorrow,

To | sully a | _heart so_ | brilliant and | bright;

But | _drops of_ | _kind re_ | _membrance_ | borrow,

To | _bathe the_ | relic from | _morn to_ | night.”

That the verse so constructed is perfectly rhythmical, we know, by the

exactness with which it lends itself to music. The musical bars would

point out the divisions, or the number at least, of the feet, if we had

any doubt upon that subject.

In order that we may the more distinctly perceive the mixture of

two kinds of feet in this example, let us reduce it entirely to

trissyllable feet, by slight changes in the expression:--

When in my tomb I shall calmly be | lying,

O | carry my heart to my conqueror dear:

Tell her it liv’d upon smiles and on | nectar

Of | brilliant hue, while it lingered here.

Bid her not shed any token of | sorrow

To | sully a heart so resplendant and | glowing;

But | fountains of loving remem_ber_ance | borrow,

To | water the relic from morning to even.

I have arranged this variation so that the incomplete feet at the end

of one line and the beginning of the next in each distich, as well as

the rest, make up a complete dactyl; and thus, the measure runs on

through each two written lines in a long line of seven dactyls and a

strong syllable. But it will be easily perceived, that if the feet had

been left incomplete at the end of each written line, the pause in the

metre would have supplied what was wanting, and would have prevented

the verse from being perceived as irregular. Thus these are still true

dactylic lines:----

When in my tomb I shall calmly recline

O carry my heart to my conqueror dear;

Tell her it lived upon smiles and on wine

Of brilliant hue, while it lingered here.

I will now arrange the same passage so as to reduce it entirely to

dissyllable feet, which alters the character of the versification.

When in death I calm recline,

O bear my heart to her I love;

Say it liv’d on smiles and wine

Of brightest hue, while here above.

Bid her shed no tear of grief

To soil a heart so clear and bright;

But drops of kind remembrance give

To bathe the gem from morn to night.

As the dissyllable feet may be divided either as dactyls or as

anapæsts, so the dissyllable feet may be divided either as trochees or

as iambuses. Thus we may scan either of these ways--

O | bear my | heart to | her I | love,

O bear | my heart | to her | I love.

But in this case, as in that of dissyllable feet, the metre is more

decidedly trochaic, because each line, (that is, each distich, as here

written,) begins with a strong syllable.

_When_ in | death I | calm re | cline.

The animated trochaic character, when once given by a few lines of this

kind, continues in the movement of the verse, even when retarded by

initial iambuses; as,

“Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee

Jest and youthful jollity:

Quips and cranks and wanton wiles,

Nods and becks and wreathed smiles;

Such as dwell on Hebe’s _cheek_,

_And_ love to live in dimple sleek,

Sport that wrinkled care de_rides_,

_And_ laughter holding both his sides.”

Here the weak syllables _And_, _And_, do not materially interrupt the

trochaic verse. They may be taken as completing the trochee at the end

of the preceding line.

In these verses, and in all English verses, there are no spondees, or

feet consisting of two strong syllables. No foot in English metre has

more than one strong syllable, and the weak syllables are appended to

the strong ones, and swept along with them in the current of the metre.

The equality between a trissyllable and a consecutive dissyllable foot,

which the metre requires, is preserved by adding strength to the short

syllable, so as to preserve the balance. Thus, when we say----

_Bear_ my heart to my _mis_tress dear,

There is a strength given to _bear_, and _mis_tress, which makes them

metrically balance _carry_ and _conqueror_ in this verse,

_Carry_ my heart to my _conqueror_ dear.

It must be observed, however, that the proportion between heavy and

light, or strong and weak, in syllables, is not always the same. When

a dissyllable foot occurs in the place of a trissyllable one, in a

metre of a generally trissyllabic character, the light syllable may

be conceived as standing in the place of two, and is therefore more

weighty than the light syllables of the trissyllabic feet. Thus, if we

say--

“Tell her it lived upon smiles _and_ wine,”

the _and_ is more weighty than it would be, if we were to say--

“Tell her it lived upon smiles _and on_ wine.”

And if again we say--

“Tell her it liv’d _on_ smiles and on wine,”

the _on_ is more weighty than the same syllable in _upon_. Hence, in

these cases, _smiles and_, _lived on_, approach to spondees. But still

there is a decided preponderance in the first syllables of each of

these feet respectively.

I have hitherto considered dactylics with rhyme; of course the measure

may be preserved, though the rhyme be omitted, either at the end of the

alternate lines; as

When in my tomb I am calmly lying,

O bear my heart to my mistress dear:

Tell her it liv’d upon smiles and nectar

Of brightest hue, while it lingered here:

Or altogether; as

Bid her not shed one tear of sorrow

To sully a heart so brilliant and bright;

But drops from fond remembrance gather,

And bathe for ever the relic in these.

In the absence of rhyme, each distich is detached, and the number of

such distiches, or long lines, may be either odd or even.

I shall now take a shorter dactylic measure; and first, with alternate

rhymes.

Tityrus, you laid along,

In the shade of umbrageous beeches,

Practise your pastoral song,

As your muse in your solitude teaches.

We from the land that we love

From all that we value and treasure,

We must as exiles remove:

While, Tityrus, you at your leisure

Make all the woods to resound

Amaryllis’s name at your pleasure.

We see, in this example that the rhyme is a fetter to the construction.

In this case, it is necessary to have three distichs which rhyme, in

order to close the metre with the sentence.

We detach these distichs, or long lines, from each other, by rejecting

the use of rhyme between successive distichs. We might make the two

parts of the same long line rhyme thus:--

Tityrus, you in the shadow Of chestnuts stretcht in the meadow,

Practise your pastoral verses In strains which your oat-pipe rehearses.

We, poor exiles, are leaving All our saving and having;

Leaving the land that we treasure: You in the woods at your pleasure

Make them resound, when your will is, The name of the fair Amaryllis.

But these rhymes, even if written in one long line, are really two

short lines with a double rhyme; and this measure, besides its

difficulty, is destitute of dignity and grace.

If we take the same measure, rejecting rhyme, and keep the dactylics

pure, we have such distichs as these:--

Tityrus, you in the shade

Of a mulberry idly reclining,

Practise your pastoral muse

In the strains that your flageolet utters.

But these may be written in long lines, thus:--

Tityrus, you in the shade of a mulberry idly reclining,

Practise your pastoral muse, in the strains that your flageolet utters;

We from the land that we love, from our property sever’d and banish’d,

We go as exiles away; and yet, Tityrus, you at your leisure

Tutor the forests to ring with the name of the fair Amaryllis.

These verses are of a rhythm as familiar and distinct to the English

ear as any which our poets use. Now these are _hexameters_ consisting

each of five dactyls and a trochee,--the trochee approaching to a

spondee, as I have seen; yet still, not being a spondee, but having its

first syllable decidedly strong in comparison with the second.

The above hexameters are perfectly regular, both in being purely

dactylic, and in having the regular _cæsura_, namely the end of a word

at the beginning of the third dactyl, as--

We from the land that we _love_

We go as exiles _away_.

But these hexameters admit of irregularities in the same manner as

the common English measures of which we have spoken. We may have

dissyllable feet instead of trissyllable in any place in the line; thus

in the fourth--

Tityrus, you in the shade of a _chestnut_ idly reclining.

In the third--

Tityrus, you in the _shade of_ mulberries idly reclining.

In the second--

Tityrus, _you in_ shadows of mulberries idly reclining.

In the first--

_Damon_, you in the shade of a mulberry idly reclining.

We may also have a dissyllable for the fifth foot--

Tityrus, you in the shade of a beech at your _ease re_clining.

But this irregularity disturbs the dactylic character of the verse more

than the like substitution in any other place. So long as we have a

dactyl in the fifth place, the dactylic character remains. Thus, even

if we make all the rest dissyllables--

“Damon, you in shades of beech-trees idly reclining.”

But if the fifth foot also be a dissyllable, the measure becomes

trochaic.

“Damon, you in shades of beech at ease reclining,

Play your oaten pipe, your rural strains combining.”

Supposing the dactylic character to be retained, we may have

dissyllables not in one place only, but in several, as we have seen

is the case in the more common English dactylics. Now, the metre thus

produced corresponds with the heroic verse hexameters of the Greek and

Latin languages; except in this, that the English dissyllable feet are

not exactly spondees. The Greek and Latin hexameters admit of dactyls

and spondees indiscriminately, except that the fifth foot is regularly

a dactyl, and the sixth a spondee or trochee. Also, the regular cæsura

of the Greek and Latin hexameters occurs in the beginning of the third

foot, as in the English hexameters above given.

I think I have now shown that, without at all deviating from the common

forms of English metre, and their customary liberties, we arrive at a

metre which represents the classical hexameters, with this difference

only, that the spondees are replaced by trochees. And this substitution

is a necessary change; it results from the alternation of strong and

weak syllables, which is a condition of all English versification.

And thus I have, I conceive, established my second point; that

hexameters, exactly representing those of Greek and Latin verse, may

grow out of purely English habits of versification.

But at the same time, I allow that classical scholars do read and write

English hexameters with a recollection of those which they are familiar

with in Greek and Latin; and that they have a disposition to identify

the rhythm of the ancient and the modern examples, which leads them to

treat English hexameters differently from other forms of English verse.

This gives rise to some particularities of English hexameters, of which

I may have a few words to say hereafter. In the mean time, I subscribe

myself, your obedient

M. L.

FROM SCHILLER.

COLUMBUS

Still steer on, brave heart! Though witlings laugh at thy emprise,

And though the helmsmen drop, weary and nerveless, their hands.

Westward and westward still! There land must emerge from the ocean;

There it lies in its light, clear to the eye of thy mind.

Trust in the power that guides: press on o’er the convex of ocean:

What thou seek’st, were it not, yet it should rise from the waves.

Nature with Genius holds a pact that is fixt and eternal--

All which is promised by _this_, _that_ never fails to perform.

ODYSSEUS

O’er all seas, in his search of home, lay the path of Odysseus,

Scilla he past and her yell, skirted Charybdis’s whirl.

Through the perils of land, through the perils of waves in their fury--

Yea even Hades’ self scap’t not his devious course.

Fortune lays him at last asleep on Ithaca’s margin,

And he awakes, nor knows, grieving, the land that he sought.

M. L.

ALGERIA

[_Algeria and Tunis in 1845._ By CAPTAIN J. C. KENNEDY, 18th Royal

Irish. London: 1846.]

[_Algeria in 1845._ By COUNT ST MARIE, formerly in the French Military

Service. London: 1846.]

We have always felt a strong interest in the welfare and progress of

the French colonies in Africa. Our reasons for the same are manifold,

and must be manifest to the readers of Maga; that is to say, to

all judicious and reflecting persons conversant with the English

language. There is, indeed, much to excite sympathy and admiration in

the conduct of our neighbours to their infant settlement in the land

of the Moor and the Arab. Their treatment of the natives has been

uniformly considerate, their anxiety to avoid bloodshed painfully

intense, their military operations have been invariably successful,

and in their countless triumphs, modestly recorded in the veracious

bulletins of a Bugeaud, they have ever shown themselves generous and

magnanimous conquerors. The result of their humane and judicious

colonial administration, and of a little occasional wholesome severity

on the part of Colonel Pelissier, or some other intrepid officer,

is most satisfactory and evident. A hundred thousand men are now

sufficient to keep the ill-armed and scattered Arab tribes in a state

of perfect tranquillity. Twice or thrice in the year, it is true,

they rise up, like ill-bred savages as they are, and fiercely assault

the Europeans who have kindly volunteered, to govern their country,

and, whenever it may be possible, to civilize themselves. A few

unfortunate French detachments, outposts and colonists, are plundered

and slaughtered; but then up comes a Lamoricière or a Changarnier,

perchance the Duke of Isly himself, or a prince of the blood in person,

with thousands of bayonets and sabres; and forthwith the turbulent

Bedouins scamper across the desert in tumultuous flight, their dingy

bournouses waving in the wind, shouts of fury and exultation upon their

lips, and Frenchmen’s heads upon the points of their scimeters. As to

Abd-el-Kader, the grand instigator of these unjustifiable outbreaks,

he is a troublesome and discontented barbarian, always kicking up a

devil of a hubbub, usually appearing where least desired, but, when

wanted, never to be found. The gallant and _reverend_ gentleman--for,

besides being an emir and a general, he is a marabout or saint of the

very first chop--has caused the aforesaid Bugeaud a deal of annoyance;

and the marshal has long been desirous of a personal interview, which

hitherto has been obstinately declined. Altogether the emir is a

vexatious fellow; and it is another strong proof of French kindness and

conciliatory spirit, that although he has frequently wandered about in

very reduced circumstances, _sans_ army or friends, with a horse and a

half, and a brace of barefooted followers, (_vide_ the Paris newspapers

of any date for the last dozen years,) the French, instead of laying

hold of him and hanging him up, which of course they might easily have

done, have preferred to leave him at large. Some say that it would be

as unreasonable to expect an enthusiastic fox-hunter to waylay and

shoot the animal that affords him sport, as to look for the capture of

Abd-el-Kader at the hands of men who find pleasure and profit in the

chase, but would derive little of either from its termination. To cut

his throat would be to cut their own, and to slay the bird that lays

the golden epaulets. It is related, in a book now before us, that M.

Bugeaud, when applied to by a colonel for a column of troops to pursue

and capture the emir, replied in these terms:--“Do not forget, sir,

that to Abd-el-Kader most of your brother officers are indebted for

their chances of promotion.” Others have asserted, that if the Arab

chief is still a free denizen of the desert, it must be attributed to

his own skill, courage, and conduct; to the bravery of his troops, and

the fidelity of his adherents; and not to any merciful or prudential

scruples of his opponents. We reject this notion as absurd and

groundless. We are persuaded that French forbearance is the sole reason

that the head of Abd-el-Kader, duly embalmed by the _procédé_ Gannal,

does not at this moment grace the sideboard of the victorious Duke of

Isly, or frown grimly from the apex of the Luxor obelisk.

Having thus avowed our strong interest in the prosperity of Algeria,

we need hardly say that we read every book calculated to throw light

upon the progress and prospects of that country. The volumes referred

to at foot of the first page, had scarcely issued from the sanctuaries

of their respective publishers, when our paper-knife was busy with

their contents, and as we cut we eagerly read. We confess to have

been disappointed. Captain Kennedy’s narrative is tame, and rather

pedantic; its author appears more anxious to display his classical

and historical lore, and to indulge in long descriptions of scenery

and Arab encampments, than to give us the sort of information we

should most have appreciated and relished. As a book of travels, it

is respectable, and not unamusing; but from travellers in a country

whose state is exceptional, one has a right to expect more. We had

hoped for more copious details of the present condition and probable

result of French colonization, for more numerous indications of the

state of feeling and intercourse between the Arab tribes and their

European conquerors. These matters are but slightly touched upon. It is

true that Captain Kennedy, in his preface, avows his intention of not

entering into political discussions, and of abstaining from theories

as to the future condition of the southern coast of the Mediterranean.

We can only regret, therefore, that he has _not_ thought proper to

be more comprehensive. His opportunities were excellent, his pen is

fluent, and he evidently possesses some powers of observation. Received

with open arms and cordial hospitality by the numerous officers to

whom he had introductions, or with whom he casually became acquainted,

he has perhaps felt a natural unwillingness to probe and lay bare

the weak points of the French in Africa. Such, at least, is the

general impression conveyed to us by his book. He seems hampered by

fear of requiting kindness by censure; and, to escape the peril, has

abstained from criticism, forgetting the possible construction that

may be put upon his silence. There is certainly scope for a work on

Algeria of a less superficial character, and such a one we wish he

had applied himself to produce. From no one could it better proceed

than from a British officer of intelligence and education. We are not

disposed, however, because Captain Kennedy has not fulfilled all our

expectations, to judge with severity the printed results of his tour.

His tone is easy and gentlemanly, and we are far from crying down what

we presume to be his first literary attempt.

From the English officer we turn to the French one, whose book is of

a much more ambiguous character. Who is this Count St Marie? Whence

does he derive his countship and his melodramatic or vaudevilleish

name? Does he write in English, or is his book translated? Is he a

Frenchman as well as a French officer, a _bonâ fide_ human being,

or a publisher’s myth; a flesh and blood author, or a cloak for

a compilation? From sundry little discrepancies, we suspect the

latter; and that he is indebted for name, title, and rank, to the

ingenious benevolence of his editor. Sometimes he talks as if he were

a Frenchman; at others, in a manner to make us suppose him English.

Whatever his nation, it is strange, if he has been an officer in the

French service, that he should request information from a certain

mysterious Mr R----, whom he constantly puts forward as an authority,

on the subject of promotion in the French army, and respecting French

military decorations. The commanders of the Legion of Honour, he tells

us, wear the gold cross _en sautoir_, like the cross of St Andrew. Odd

enough that Count St Marie should be more conversant with Scottish

decorations than with French ones. Talking of Bougia, at page 203, he

remarks that “the blindness and imbecility of the French in Africa

_is_ (he might have said _are_) more perceptible there than any where

else;” and adverts to “the ruined _débarcadère_, the fragments of

which seem left only to put French negligence to shame.” We doubt if

any Frenchman would have written in this tone, especially in a book

intended for publication in England. There are many similar passages in

the volume. Yet the gallant count talks of the French consul as “_our_

consul,” and of the French troops as “_our_ columns,” the latter in the

very same paragraph in which he sneers at their victories. His style

is free from foreign idioms, but here and there occurs a peculiarity

seeming to denote a translation. A town is said to be garrisoned by

veteran troops, when the meaning evidently is, that the garrison was

a detachment of the French corps known as “the Veterans.” Although

_cent sous_ is a common term in France to express a five-franc piece,

in English we do not talk of a payment of one hundred sous. But it is

unnecessary to multiply instances. We have probably said enough to make

our readers coincide in our suspicion, that “Algeria in 1845,” by Count

St Marie, is neither fish, flesh, nor red herring, but altogether of

the composite order. It is, nevertheless, amusing and full of anecdote,

with only here and there a blunder or dash of exaggeration; and

although, as we believe, a compilation, it is tolerably correct in its

statistics and inferences. We must protest, however, against the humbug

of the system. A book that has merit may be launched under its true

colours, and kept afloat without a titled name upon the title-page.

The motives that induce the French to cling, with a tenacity which an

immense annual outlay of treasure and human life has hitherto failed

to weaken, to their African conquest, are, we believe, pretty well

appreciated, at least in this country, where colonies and colonization

are understood, and where French policy is studied by many. Algeria

is the safety-valve by which the superfluous steam of the national

character is in some measure let off; it affords a _point de mire_

for the people, occupation for the army, a subject of discussion for

the newspapers. Doubtless a large section of the French nation, or at

least of its more sensible and thinking classes, would gladly witness

the abandonment of a colony which has already cost more than there is

any probability of its yielding for years to come--more, perhaps, than

it ever will yield, either in direct or indirect advantages. But were

it proposed to give it up, the general cry would be loudly against the

measure. Not that there is a probability of the proposal being made.

The present shrewd and wary ruler of France well knows that a little

blood-letting is as essential to keep down the feverish temperament

of his people as a plaything is to occupy their thoughts and preserve

them from mischief. Algeria is at once the leech and the toy. Restless

and enterprising spirits there find the field of action they require;

those who might otherwise be busy with home politics, have their

attention diverted by battles and bulletins. The evils of protracted

and unprofitable warfare do not, in this instance, come home to the

nation in a very direct and palpable form, and therefore disgust at

the resultless strife has not yet replaced the interest and excitement

it creates. Now and then a tent or an umbrella is captured and stuck

up in the gardens of the Tuileries to be gaped and wondered at by the

Parisians. This gives a fillip to popular enthusiasm, and well-fed

national guardsmen, as they take their turn of duty at the palace

gates, look with increased respect and envy upon the Algerine schako

and bronzed visage of their fellow sentry of the line. Captain Kennedy

gives an amusing instance of the extent to which the martial ardour of

sober French citizens is sometimes carried by that stir of arms and din

of battle whose echoes are wafted to their ears from the distant shores

of the Mediterranean.

“Among the various costumes and styles of dress seen in the streets

of Algiers, none are so ridiculous as that of the European civilian,

dressed _à l’Arabe_, some fine specimens of which we saw to-day. One of

this genus, a wealthy shopkeeper from the Rue Chaussée d’Antin, had,

by his adventures a short time since, created some little amusement.

Enthusiastic on the subject of the new colony, his thoughts by day had

been for months of Algiers, and his dreams by night of bournoused

warriors, fiery steeds, and bloody yataghans. At last, determined to

see with his own eyes, he left his beloved Paris, and arrived safely in

Algiers.

“His first care was to procure a complete Arab dress, in which he

sallied forth the morning after his arrival. He came in search of

adventures, and he was soon gratified. Stalking along, he accidentally

hustled a couple of French soldiers, was sworn at, thrashed, and rolled

in the mud as a ‘Sacré cochon d’Arabe,’ lost his purse from having no

pockets in his new garments, and was nearly kicked down stairs by the

garçon of his hotel for venturing to enter his own room.

“Undismayed by these misadventures, he set out the following day,

armed to the teeth, to ride to Blidah. When, half-way there, he was

seized as a suspicious character by two Arab gendarmes, for being armed

without having a permit, and pretending not to understand Arabic;

he was disarmed and dismounted, his hands tied behind his back, and

fastened to his captor’s stirrup. He spent the night on the ground in a

wretched hut, with a handful of cuscusoo for supper, and next morning

was dragged into Algiers in broad daylight, half dead with fear and

fatigue. On being carried before the police he was instantly liberated;

and, taking advantage of the first packet, returned to France, having

seen more of life in Algeria in a few days, than many who had spent the

same number of years in the colony.”

Great must have been the discomfiture of the worthy burgher, although

he had much reason to rejoice at having encountered Arab gendarnes

and French troopers, instead of Bedouins or Kabyles, who would

hardly have let him off with a beating, a night’s imprisonment, and

a cuscusoo supper. We can imagine his delight at again finding the

asphalte of the Boulevards under his boot-soles, and the respect with

which his coffee-house gossips regarded him, as he related, over his

post-prandial _demi-tasse_, or in the intervals of his game at dominos,

the adventures of his amateur campaign, and the perils that beset the

pilgrim to Algeria. A slight traveller’s license would convert the pair

of gendarmes into a troop of hostile cavalry, and his brief detention

in the hut into a visit to the dungeons of Abd-el-Kader. His friends

would look up to him as a military authority, his wife exclaim at the

injustice that left his button-hole undecorated; and when next his

company of the national guard elected their officers, he would have but

to present himself to be instantly chosen. The laurels he had failed

to achieve in Africa would be bestowed upon him by acclamation in the

guard-room of his _arrondissement_.

In relating the well-known incident that gave rise to hostilities

between France and the Dey of Algiers, Count St Marie goes back to

the remote cause, which, by his account, was a lady. In the time of

Napoleon the Bey of Tunis had a favourite female slave, for whom he

ordered, of an Algerine Jew, a costly and magnificent head-dress. The

Jew, unable to get it manufactured in the country, wrote to Paris;

the head-dress was made, at an expense of twelve thousand francs,

and the modest Israelite charged it thirty thousand to the Bey. The

latter was too much pleased with the bauble to demur at the price,

but, not being in cash, he paid for it in corn. There chanced just

then to be a scarcity in France; the Jew sold his grain to the army

contractors, and managed so well that he became a creditor of the

French government for upwards of a million of francs. Napoleon fell,

and the Bourbons declined to pay; but the Jew contrived to interest

the Dey of Algiers in his cause, and remonstrances were addressed to

the French government. The affair dragged on for years, and at last,

in 1829, on the eve of a festival when the diplomatic corps were

admitted to pay their respects to the Dey, the latter expostulated

with the French consul on the subject of the long delay. The answer

was unsatisfactory, and the consequence was the celebrated rap with

a fan or fly-flap, which sent its giver into exile, and converted

Algeria into a French province. On visiting the Kasbah, or citadel,

at Algiers, Captain Kennedy was shown the little room in which the

insult was offered to the representative of France. It is now used as

a poultry-yard. “Singularly enough,” says the captain, “as we entered,

a cock, strutting on the deserted divan, proclaimed his victory over

some feebler rival by triumphant crow--an appropriate emblem of the

real state of affairs.” But the conquered cock is game; and although

sorely punished by his adversary’s spurs, he returns again and again to

the charge.

Within the fortress of the Kasbah were comprised the Dey’s palace,

harem, and treasury. The buildings are now greatly altered, at least

as regards their application. The private residence of the Dey has

been converted into officers’ quarters, the harem is occupied by

artillerymen, a kiosk has been arranged as an hospital, and a mosque

has become a Catholic chapel. The treasury was said to contain an

immense sum at the time of its capture by the French; but the exact

amount was never known, and various accounts have been given of the

probable disposal of the money. Captain Kennedy believes there is

little doubt that the sum of forty-three millions of francs, officially

acknowledged to have been shipped to France, was employed by the

ministers of Charles the Tenth in their vain endeavours to suppress the

revolution of 1830. Certain general officers of the invading army have

been charged with acts of appropriation; but nothing was ever proved,

and the whole rests on rumour and unsupported assertion. However the

money was got rid of, there is no doubt that a vast deal was found. The

Dey, a careless extravagant old dog, worthy of his piratical ancestors,

was any thing but minute in his record of receipts and expenditure.

He was not the man to ring his sovereign or mark his bank-notes; he

knew as much about double entry as about the Greek mythology or the

Waverley novels, and kept his accounts with a shovel and a corn-bin.

Wooden partitions divided his treasury into compartments--one for

gold, one for silver, and separating foreign and native coin; when

money was received, it was thrown in uncounted; when wanted, it was

taken out without form or ceremony of writing. “Such also was the

carelessness shown,” adds Captain Kennedy, “that, in one part, the

walls still bear the impressions of coins cast in at random, before the

inner coating of plaster had had time to dry,”--quite a realisation

of fairy tale accounts, and popular ideas of Oriental profusion and

lavish prodigality. The manner in which these heads of gold and silver

were guarded is equally curious, and completes a picture worthy of

the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. “Prior to the French occupation,”

says M. St Marie, “any attempt to penetrate into these caves was

impracticable, the approach to them being guarded by lions, tigers and

hyenas, chained up at short distances from each other.” Besides these

formidable brute body-guards, whose melodious voices must have greatly

soothed the slumbers of the fair inmates of the seraglio, the Dey had

barracks within the Kasbah for his household troops, on whose fidelity

he relied for protection from the soldiery of the regency, frequently

in a state of mutiny.

Military hospitals are of course a primary necessity in a country

where half a million of soldiers have perished during the last fifteen

years, either by disease or the sword. At Algiers there are several

establishments of the kind, one of which, situated in the gardens of

the Dey, and capable of containing five thousand sick, is particularly

worthy of notice. Large as the building is, it is insufficient in

summer and autumn to accommodate all who seek admission. The gardens

have been left as much as possible uninjured, and their orange-trees

and fountains afford cool shade and delightful freshness to the

convalescent soldiers. On the other hand, the Jardin Marengo, belonging

to Colonel Marengo, the commandant of the citadel of Algiers,

contributes its quota to the sick wards. It is cultivated, Count St

Marie informs us, by condemned soldiers, who suffer dreadfully from

the heat and from exposure to the burning sun. Scarcely a day passes

without some of the unfortunate men being conveyed to hospital,

and in many instances they never recover. The real name of Colonel

Marengo is Capon. His father distinguished himself at the battle of

Marengo, and Napoleon jestingly bestowed on him the name retained by

his son, instead of the ignoble appellation that he previously bore.

Apropos of the hospital--or it might just as well be said, _àpropos

de bottes_--the Count, who certainly never loses an opportunity of

bringing in a good story, relates one of a M. St Vincent, president of

a French learned society, who went to Africa to prosecute researches

in natural history. Eager for specimens, he was liberal in his

payments; and one day a great curiosity was brought to him in the

shape of two rats, each with a long excrescence, like the trunk of an

elephant, issuing from the top of the nose. He caught at the prize, and

immediately forwarded to the Jardin des Plantes at Paris a scientific

description of the _rat trompé_. But his letter had scarcely gone when

the excrescence became dry and dropped off; and on examination it was

found that incisions had been made above the noses of the animals, and

the tails of two other rats inserted The _rat trompé_ dwindled into a

_rat trompeur_.

After a short stay in the city of Algiers, and contemplating a return

thither, Captain Kennedy and his companion, Viscount Fielding, started

for Blidah by diligence. At about half a mile from the Kasbah, the

road--an excellent one, constructed by the troops--passes under the

walls of Fort l’Empereur, built in commemoration of a victory obtained

by the Moors in the year 1541 over the troops of Charles V. Some of

the cannon abandoned on this occasion by the Spaniards were originally

French, having been taken by the imperial army at the battle of Pavia.

The Algerines mounted them on the Kasbah, where they remained until in

1830, after an interval of three hundred and five years, they again

fell into the hands of their first possessors. The fort, which owes

its existence to a signal triumph of Algerine power, was not destined

to survive the downfall of the Crescent. Invested by the French, a

few hours’ cannonade dismounted its guns, breached its walls, and

ruined its defences. The garrison were compelled to abandon it, and

retreat into the city, with the exception of a few desperadoes, who had

sworn to perish, but never to fly before the Christians. Whilst the

French troops impatiently awaited orders for an assault, a tremendous

explosion took place; and when the dust and smoke cleared away, the

whole western face of the fort was a heap of ruins. The surrender of

the city shortly followed.

Previously to an earthquake that occurred in 1825, the town of Blidah,

situated in a fertile valley at the foot of the lesser Atlas, numbered

fifteen thousand inhabitants. Many of these perished in the ruins of

their dwellings, and the place never recovered itself; for, at the

period of the French invasion, the population was only five thousand.

Placed in the very heart of the scene of war, the diminution continued,

and the native inhabitants are now an insignificant handful. The

European population is on the increase, and the situation of the town

on the line of communication between the port of Algiers and the

country beyond the Atlas, as well as its good climate and abundance of

water, seems to mark it out as a place of future importance. In former

times it was a favourite residence of the Moors and Arabs, who called

it the New Damascus. There has been hard fighting there during the

present war, and it has thrice changed masters. It is surrounded by

luxuriant gardens and groves of orange-trees, whose fruit is said to be

the finest in the world. The plantations formerly extended quite up to

the town; but the Arabs took advantage of this to come down and pick

off the sentries, and it was found necessary to clear a large number

of acres. This impoverished many of the inhabitants, whose wealth

consisted in plantations of oranges, lemons, and olives. The town is

usually garrisoned by the Zouaves, troops originally raised amongst the

natives in imitation of our Sepoys. Soon after the formation of the

corps, however, Frenchmen were allowed and encouraged to enlist, and

of these the three battalions now principally consist. As fighting men

they enjoy the highest possible character, but in quarters they are

terrible scamps. Its gallant reputation and picturesque uniform, and

the numerous opportunities of distinction afforded to it, cause this

corps to be generally preferred by volunteers, and non-commissioned

officers often leave the line to serve as privates in the Zouaves.

At Blidah, Captain Kennedy and his friend procured horses, and with

their party strengthened by two Prussian officers, they set out for

Medeah. West of the river Chiffa they came upon another military road,

at which a battalion was then working. Men and officers were encamped

in tents, and in huts constructed of boughs. “The men employed on this

duty receive seventy-five centimes (about sevenpence) additional pay

per diem; and during the winter and spring, as the work is not hard,

it is rather preferred by the troops to garrison duty.” The system of

providing employment for the soldier, when he is not actually opposed

to the enemy, is very generally carried out by the French in their

African colony, and also in France when it is possible to be done.

Captain Kennedy evidently approves of it. At Medeah, a few minutes’

walk from the gate, are the gardens of the garrison. Each regiment or

battalion has its piece of ground, divided into lots for the different

companies, and supplying the troops with vegetables. “Here, as at

other places I have since visited, the ground in the occupation of the

troops was in a high state of culture, and superior both in produce and

neatness of arrangement to the gardens of the civilians. * * * In many

of our own colonies, and even at home, this system might be followed

with beneficial results to our troops; for, putting aside the addition

the produce would make to the comforts of the men, any employment or

amusement that would tend to keep the soldier out of the canteen or

public-house during his leisure hours, and there are many on whom it

would have that effect, must be advantageous.”

Medeah is the capital of the province of Tittery, and the head-quarters

of a subdivision of the French army, commanded by General Marey, to

whom Captain Kennedy had introductions. To these the general did all

honour, and sketched out for his guests the plan of an expedition to

the Little Sahara. A French traveller, recording his visit to Medeah,

has given the following ludicrous and melancholy account of the

caravanserais of the town. “On a déjà plusieurs cafés avec l’inévitable

billard, et deux hôtels où le travail est divisé, car l’un loge and

l’autre nourrit; les chambres n’y sont pas encore tout à-fait meublées,

et le charpentier n’a pas encore achevé l’escalier qui y monte. On y a

oublié une certaine faience très utile, mais il y a déjà des miroirs.”

This description, doubtless as true as it is characteristic, now no

longer applies. Things have improved in the last year or two; and at

the time of Captain Kennedy’s journey, the Medeah hotels were very

tolerable. But he was eager for the desert, and tarried little in

the town. Accompanied by an aide-de-camp of General Marey, who had

volunteered to do the honours of the colony, and show to the English

visitors life amongst the Bedouins, escorted also by a score of light

infantry, a party of Spahis or native cavalry, by half a dozen officers

of the garrison, several servants, and a vast number of dogs, our

travellers struck into the Arab country. The district they were about

to traverse being peopled by friendly tribes, this large attendance was

less for purposes of protection to the Englishmen than of mischief to

the wild-boars, which it was proposed to hunt. After a night passed in

an Arab tent, the battue began; and although not very successful, only

one boar being killed, the sportsmen deemed themselves well repaid for

eight hours’ walk in a broiling sun, by magnificent scenery, and the

excitement of the chase.

There is interest, although no very great novelty, in Captain Kennedy’s

narrative of his wanderings amongst the _dasheras_ and _douars_ of the

Bedouins. The douars are Arab camps, the dasheras villages, or rather

collections of huts, built of stone and mud, and roofed with branches

of trees. The walls of these miserable habitations are low; the door

does duty as sole window; for a fireplace a hole is made in the earthen

door; the furniture consists of a few mats, a corn-mill, some pots, and

a lamp. These are the dwellings of the agricultural tribes, who live

near the mountains. The pastoral tribes roam over the desert; their

tents, corn-mills, and mats, packed upon camels; and driving with them

flocks and herds of sheep, goats, and cattle. When they halt, the tents

are pitched in a circle, the opening towards the east; and at night the

animals are driven into the inclosure, for safety from robbers, and

to prevent straying. A family of Arabs will frequently wander several

days’ march from their usual abiding-place to some French garrison or

settlement, there to barter their stock for corn and European produce.

They travel by easy journeys, and halt whenever convenient, only

taking care to keep out of the way of hostile tribes. “A short time

serves to unload the camel, spread the mats, and pitch the tent. A few

handfuls of corn, ground in the mill, kneaded into a paste with water,

and baked in thin cakes on the fire, with a drink of water, or, if

they have it, milk, forms their simple meal.” Such is the abstemious

life of these sons of the desert. In the autumn, when the great fair

is held at Boghar, the advanced post of the French on the side of

the Little Sahara, several thousand people repair thither, bringing

hides, cheese, butter, and wool; also dates, skins of beasts, ostrich

feathers, and the woollen manufactures of the Arab women, received from

the interior of the country. These various products are exchanged for

honey, oil, corn, cutlery, and cotton cloths. Arms and ammunition used

to be greatly in request, but the French have prohibited that traffic.

The imports of European goods are on the increase, and Captain Kennedy

considers French trade in the north of Africa in a highly improving

state, favoured as it is by numerous roads, made or making, through

the Atlas, by the pacification of the country, and submission of the

tribes between Blidah and Boghar. How long this submission may last

must be considered doubtful. It has been induced neither by love nor

fear, but by self-interest. The more prosperous tribes, and those

located in the plain, finding Abd-el-Kader unable to protect them,

took the only means left to secure themselves from the fierce razzias

of the French, and from the ruin that these entailed. So long as they

deem it advantageous, they will doubtless be staunch to their compact;

but let then see or imagine a probable change in the fortune of the

war, and they will be found eager, as some of them have already shown

themselves, to rally once more round the standard of the Emir.

Amongst the tribes whose hospitality was shared by Captain Kennedy, the

most powerful was that of Ouled-Macktar, whose chief, Ben Douda, is

considered by the captain to afford a good type of the Arab chiefs in

the pay of France. For a long period he acted as one of Abd-el-Kader’s

lieutenants, but at a critical moment transferred his services to

the French. His people had their possessions secured to them, and he

himself received the appointment of Aga over the Arabs of the Little

Desert, with an allowance of ten per cent on the tribute paid by the

tribes under his jurisdiction. He is described as about fifty years

of age, with handsome though harsh features of the true Arab cast.

“What struck me most in his appearance, was the expression of deep

cunning strongly marked in the lines that crossed his forehead, and in

the downcast and furtive glances of the eye, observing every thing,

yet seemingly inattentive.” The Aga is very wealthy, and lives in

great luxury, comparatively to most of the Arabs. Captain Kennedy’s

party reached his camp at a fortunate moment. The douar was in an

unusual state of excitement, and great rejoicings were on foot in

honour of the marriage of the Aga’s son. The wedding-feast, consisting

of sheep roasted whole, stewed gazelle, cuscusoo, and other Bedouin

delicacies, was succeeded by some very graceless dances. Whilst the

latter proceeded, the men kept up an irregular fire of guns, pistols,

and blunderbusses, presenting their weapons at each others’ breasts,

and suddenly dropping the muzzle at the moment of pulling the trigger,

so that the charge struck the ground. As might be anticipated, this

dangerous sport did not terminate without an accident. One young savage

omitted to sink his muzzle, and sent a blank cartridge into the hip

of a comrade, knocking him over, burning his bournous, and causing an

ugly, although not a dangerous wound. “The rest of the party did not

seem to care much about it, and the wounded man’s wife, instead of

looking after her husband, rushed up to the man who had shot him, and,

assisted by some female friends, opened upon him a torrent of abuse,

with such fluency of tongue and command of language, that, after

endeavouring in vain to get in a word or two, he fairly turned tail and

walked off.”

In the douar of the Abides tribe, Captain Kennedy fell in with a

scorpion-eater. This was a disgusting-looking boy, who, being an

idiot, was looked upon by the Arabs as a saint--deprivation of

intellect constituting in their opinion a high claim to holiness.

This urchin bolted, sting and all, a fine lively scorpion upwards

of two inches long--the reptile writhing between his teeth as he

deliberately crunched it. Our traveller had heard of such exploits,

but had naturally been rather incredulous concerning the non-removal

of the sting. In this case, however, he was perfectly satisfied that

no deception was practised. The boy afterwards devoured another of the

same dangerous species of vermin. He belonged to the religious sect of

the Aisaoua, who claim the privilege of being proof against the venom

of reptiles and the effects of fire. A most extraordinary account of

a festival of this sect has been given by a French officer, of whose

narrative Captain Kennedy supplies a translation. Fortunately he does

not vouch for its veracity; so we may be permitted to disbelieve one

half and doubt the rest. M. St Marie relates some marvels of a similar

description, collected from an interpreter who had been a prisoner of

Abd-el-Kader.

The general impression made on us by Captain Kennedy’s account of

his visit to the Arab tribes, is, that the French have as yet done

little or nothing towards securing the affections and improving the

condition of the people they have subjugated. It must be acknowledged

that they have had to do with an intractable race, and one difficult

to conciliate. The old hatred and contempt of Mussulmans towards

Christians has been preserved in full force in the deserts and

mountains of Northern Africa. Centuries have done nothing to weaken

it, or to cause the followers of Mahomet to look with liking, or even

tolerance, upon the children of the Cross. The Christian is still a

dog, and the son of a dog; and even when crouching before his power

and intelligence, the Arab nurtures hopes of revenge, long deferred

but never abandoned. The French regard their conquest as secure; and

doubtless it may be rendered so by the maintenance of a powerful

military establishment; but who can foretell the time when they will

be enabled to withdraw even a portion of their present African army?

Their doing so would be a signal for revolt amongst the chiefs now in

their pay, amongst the tribes apparently most effectually humbled and

subdued. Patience and vindictiveness are distinguishing traits of the

Arab. He bides his time, but never loses sight of his object and of his

revenge. “They do not forget,” says Count St Marie, speaking of the

Arabs of the province of Oran, “that the Spaniards, weary of occupying

a territory which cost them great sacrifices, and yielded them no

advantages, abandoned their conquest after two centuries of possession.

They foresee that, one day or other, they will be rid of the French,

who have made as great a mistake as the Spaniards. The Arabs are

animated by an innate spirit of pride and independence which nothing

can subdue.” We venture no prophecies in this sense, but neither can we

predict the day when Algeria, as a colony, will become other than an

unproductive burden to its present possessors, or when it will repay

them for the blood and treasure they so liberally expend upon it.

They should beware of arguing too favourably from apparent calm and

submission on the part of the natives. The ocean is often smoothest

before a storm; the Arab most dangerous when apparently most tranquil.

Like other Orientals, he starts in an instant from torpor and indolence

into the fiercest activity. “The Arab,” says a German officer, whose

narrative of adventure in Africa has recently been rendered into

English, “lies whole days before his tent, wrapped in his bournous,

and leaning his head on his hand. His horse stands ready saddled,

listlessly hanging his head almost to the ground, and occasionally

casting sympathising glances at his master. The African might then be

supposed phlegmatic and passionless, but for the occasional flash of

his wild dark eye, which gleams from under his bushy brows. His rest

is like that of the Numidian lion, which, when satisfied, stretches

itself beneath a shady palm-tree--but beware of waking him! Like the

beasts of the desert and the forest, and like all nature in his own

land, the Arab is hurried from one extreme to the other, from the

deepest repose to the most restless activity. At the first sound of the

tam-tam, his foot is in the stirrup, his hand on his rifle, and he is

no longer the same man. He rides day and night, bears every privation,

and braves every danger, in order to make prize of a sheep or ass, or

of some enemy’s head. Such men as these are hard to conquer, and harder

still to govern: were they united into one people, they would form a

nation which would not only repulse the French, but bid defiance to

the whole world. Unhappily for them, every tribe is at enmity with

the rest; and this must ultimately lead to their destruction, for the

French have already learned to match African against African.”

The constant hostilities amongst the tribes have doubtless facilitated

their conquest; and the French still act upon the maxim of “_divide

et impera_,” as the best means to retain what they have won. As yet

little attention has been paid to more humane means of strengthening

themselves in their new possessions, and to the civilisation of the

natives. The chief plan proposed for the attainment of the latter

object, has been to subject to the conscription all Arabs born since

the occupation of the country by the French. It is very doubtful what

may be the effect of this measure should it be carried out. Will

it Frenchify the natives, and induce kindly feelings towards their

conquerors, or render them more dogged and dangerous than before? They

will, at any rate, acquire military knowledge, and an acquaintance

with the European system of warfare, which, combined with the skill in

arms and horsemanship they already possess, will render them doubly

dangerous in case of a revolt. After their seven years’ service, they

may perhaps think fit to join Abd-el-Kader, or any other leader then

warring against the French. It is want of proper discipline that has

rendered the Arab cavalry unable to compete successfully with that

of France. They charge tumultuously and with little order, each man

relying much upon himself individually, but doing little to aid the

combined effect of the mass.

Might not conversion to Christianity be made a powerful lever for

the civilisation of the tribes? They entertain a degree of respect

for the Catholic priests scarcely inferior to that shown to their

own marabouts. Abd-el-Kader has more than once released a prisoner,

without ransom, at the prayer of the Bishop of Algiers. Near the

last-named city, some French Jesuits have formed an establishment for

the education, in the Christian faith, of young Arabs and Moors. There,

as the author of “Algeria in 1845” informs us, a certain number of

youths, after being baptized, are fed, clothed, lodged, and instructed

in some trade. The French government pays little attention to this

establishment, which is supported chiefly by charitable contributions.

“It is, however, a great work of civilisation. The young pupils are

hostages in the hands of the French. It is pretty certain that their

fathers, brothers, and relations, will not join the rebels. When they

leave this establishment, they will carry with them indelible feelings

of gratitude. They will have an occupation, they will speak the French

language, and will be of the same religion as their masters.”

Exclusive of the army, Frenchmen form less than half of the European

population of Algeria. After them come Spaniards, who are very

numerous; then Maltese and Italians; and finally, a small number of

Germans, barely five per cent of the whole. The Spaniard, although

often taxed with idleness and dislike to labour, here proves himself

an industrious and valuable colonist; the Maltese travels from village

to village with his little stock of merchandise; the German tills the

ground. In the neighbourhood of Algiers, things have a very European

aspect; and the Arabs themselves, from constant intercourse with

the city, have lost much of their nationality. The appearance of a

flourishing colony is, however, confined to this district. Little

progress has as yet been made in rebuilding the other towns, although

in most of them the work of improvement is begun, and the narrow dirty

streets are being pulled down to make room for wider avenues and more

commodious houses. In some of them the only buildings as yet erected

are barracks and hospitals. The seaport town of Bona, bordering on the

regency of Tunis, is an exception. In 1832 it was reduced to ruins by

the troops of the Bey of Constantina, under command of Ben Aïssa. It is

now rebuilding on the European plan. A large square, with a fountain,

has been laid out in its centre, and several well-built streets are

completed. The town already boasts of an opera, with an Italian

company, who are assisted by amateurs, chiefly Germans, from the ranks

of the foreign legion.

The Algerine Jews attribute their first arrival in Africa to a miracle,

of which we find the following version in Count St Marie’s book. In the

year 1390, Simon-ben-Sinia, chief rabbi of Seville, and sixty of his

co-religionists were imprisoned, and condemned to die, the object being

to get possession of their wealth. On the eve of the day fixed for

their execution, Simon drew the image of a ship on his prison wall. The

drawing was miraculously changed into a real vessel, on board of which

the prisoners embarked for Algiers, where they were kindly received

by the Marabout Sidi Ben Yusef. This tradition is still an article of

faith, even with the most enlightened of the Jews. In whatever manner

they came, they have increased and multiplied, and now abound in all

the towns of Algeria. Preserving the characteristics of their race,

they differ little from their European brethren; or, if there be any

difference, it is not much in their favour. Their moral condition is

low; and although some honourable and honest men are found amongst

them, the majority are of a very different stamp. They are charitable

to their poor, and hospitable to their own people, and are generally

well conducted; but their insatiable and inherent greed leads them into

all sorts of disgraceful transactions. They have been immense gainers

by the expulsion of the Deys, under whose rule they were subjected

to much oppression and ill usage. “Their condition is now vastly

ameliorated, and I have even heard complaints of their insolence; a

very extraordinary charge against a race so tamed and broken in spirit.

The French, I fear, can place but little reliance on their courage in

occasions of danger.” The Jewish women, when young, are for the most

part strikingly handsome; and the boys are models of beauty until the

age of ten or eleven years, when their features grow coarse. Education

is confined to the males.

The taming of savage animals is no uncommon amusement amongst the

French in Algeria; and the most extraordinary and alarming pets

are encountered not only in officers’ quarters but in ladies’

drawing-rooms. At Medeah, Captain Kennedy was introduced to a

magnificent lion, the property of General Marey, Sultan by name, two

years old, and of a most amiable and docile disposition. Sultan allowed

himself to be examined and pulled about, and did not even exhibit

anger, but some annoyance when an aide-de-camp puffed a cigar in his

nostrils--a pleasantry which we are disposed to consider fool-hardy.

The only thing that excited his ire was a Scotch plaid worn by Captain

Kennedy. It was supposed that the hanging ends reminded him of an Arab

bournous, to which he had shown great aversion, having probably been

ill-treated in his infancy by the Arabs who caught him. Notwithstanding

his good temper, the general intended to get rid of him, fearing that

in the long run instinct might prove stronger than education. Besides

the lion, General Marey had an unhappy-looking eagle, and a pair of

beautiful gazelles. Count St Marie abounds in anecdotes of ferocious

beasts in a state of civilisation. One of the first acquaintances

he made in Algiers was a tame hyena, of most unamiable aspect, but

who lived in touching amity with a little dog, and did the civil for

lumps of sugar. At Bona, the count went to call upon some ladies,

and, on opening the door, beheld a brace of lions walking about the

room. He shut himself out with great precipitation, but was presently

reassured by the fair proprietresses of these singular favourites.

When he ventured into the saloon, and sat down, the lion laid his

head upon his knee, and the lioness jumped on the divan beside her

mistress. These brutes were seven years old. Lions are not very common

in Algeria. Now and then they approach the douars, greatly to the

alarm of the Arabs, who hasten to inform the French authorities, and

a battue takes place. Accidents generally happen at these lion-hunts:

Count St Marie affirms that there are always three or four lives lost,

to say nothing of wounds and other serious injuries. Whilst passing

the night in an Arab encampment at the entrance of the Bibans or Iron

Gates--the scene of much hard fighting, and of a gallant exploit of

the late Duke of Orleans--the count was roused, he informs us, in the

dead of the night, “by a noise which appeared to me like a distant peal

of thunder, repeated and prolonged by the mountain echoes. Gradually

the noise became louder. The animals sprang from their resting-places,

and the men, armed with muskets, rushed out of the tents. The oxen,

grouped themselves together, and turned their horns to the enemy;

the dogs were afraid even to bark. Presently the roaring became less

frequent and more distant; and we found that we had been saved from the

unwelcome visit of a lion, by the light of the burning brushwood on the

neighbouring hills.” The boar and the jackal are more common and less

dangerous objects of chase than the lion. Some of the rich colonists

and many of the officers are ardent sportsmen. Two of the former have

regular packs of hounds and studs of horses. Hares, rabbits, and red

partridges are very common.

The horse has greatly degenerated in Algeria, owing chiefly to the

neglect of the Arabs, who consider the choice of the dam to be alone

important, and pay no attention to the qualities of the sire. The

French government has recently established stables near Bona, with

a view to the improvement of the breed; the stud is to consist of

stallions only. There are to be similar establishments in the other

two provinces. So great is the demand for the better class of horses,

that the Arabs obtain very high prices for their stallions, which

they willingly sell, but they will not part with the mares. Every

year, therefore, it becomes more difficult to propagate a good breed.

Officers have now been sent to Tunis to make purchases, at a limit of

eighty ponds sterling for each horse. This price, Captain Kennedy says,

ought to buy the best horses in the country. Although less numerous

than formerly, splendid specimens of the Barbary Arab are still to

be met with in Algeria. Captain Kennedy describes, in glowing terms,

a magnificent charger belonging to General Marey, purchased by that

officer at a high price, and after a long negotiation, from a wealthy

chief in the south-west. M. St Marie says, that he knew a Morocco

horse to perform fifty leagues in eleven hours, without turning a hair

or showing a trace of the spur. Assuming him to speak of the common

three-mile league, or even of the old French posting league, which was

something less, this statement appears incredible. Thirteen miles and

a half an hour! Dick Turpin himself, upon his fabulous mare, would

have recoiled before such a pace sustained for such a time. The rate

of marching of the Arabs, however, from Captain Kennedy’s evidence,

is very rapid. The infantry do their fifteen or twenty leagues in

the twenty-four hours--the cavalry from thirty to forty-five--the

_meharies_ (so say the Arabs) from fifty to eighty. This is when the

tribes are on the war-path, making razzias upon each other’s flocks

and camps, when it may be supposed that they put on a little extra

steam. The mehary is an inferior race of camel, with a small hump,

and possessed of considerable strength and spirit, carrying a couple

of men. It keeps up for the whole day at about the same speed as the

ordinary trot of a horse. Its diet is herbs and date kernels. The

horses of the Sahara thrive best upon dates and milk; few of them

get barley; and they are sometimes reduced, when no other food is

obtainable, to eat cooked meat.

Amongst the most determined enemies of the French in Africa, are

to be enumerated the Kabyles, tribes dwelling in the ranges of the

Lesser Atlas, from Tunis to Morocco. Of different race from the

Arabs, they are believed to be the aboriginal inhabitants of Northern

Africa. Secure in their wild valleys, they have ever preserved their

independence. Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Arabs, all failed to

subdue them; and, although some of the tribes, whose territory is the

least inaccessible, are now partially under the rule of the French, the

maritime range, from the east of the Metidjah to Philippeville, remains

unconquered. Their numbers are inconsiderable, roughly estimated at

eighty thousand. This would give a fighting population of at most from

sixteen to twenty thousand men; but that small force has been found

efficient to preserve from foreign domination the almost impregnable

fastnesses in which they dwell. Although the tribes wage frequent war

amongst themselves, a common enemy unites them all. The attachment of

the Kabyles to their country and tribe is remarkable. Like the Swiss,

or the Spanish Galicians, they are accustomed to wander forth when

young, and seek their fortune in other lands. Kabyle servants and

labourers are found in all the towns and villages of Northern Africa.

But if they learn that their tribe is threatened or at war, they

abandon their situations, however advantageous, and hasten home, and to

arms. They are very brave, but barbarously cruel, giving no quarter,

and torturing their prisoners before cutting off their heads.

Their weapons are guns six or seven feet long, pistols, and yataghans,

chiefly of their own manufacture, and the materials for which are

found in their mountains, where they work mines of copper, lead,

and iron. In their rude way, and considering the badness of their

tools, they are tolerably ingenious. Amongst other things, they make

counterfeit five-franc pieces, sufficiently well executed to take in

the less knowing amongst the Arabs. Their industry is great, and,

besides the valleys, they cultivate the steep mountain sides, forming

terraces by means of walls, such as are seen in the vineyards on

the Rhine and in Switzerland. Possessing few horses, they usually

fight on foot; and in the plain, their untutored courage is unable

to withstand the discipline of the French troops. Their charges

are furious but disorderly; and when beaten back, they disperse to

rally again at a distance. In the mountains, where the advantages of

military organization have less weight, they are sturdy and dangerous

foes, fighting on the guerilla plan, disputing each inch of ground,

and disappearing from before their enemy only to fall with redoubled

fierceness upon his flank or rear. No foreigners can penetrate into

their country, and even Arabs run great risk amongst them. Not long

ago, Captain Kennedy informs us, a party of Arab traders, suspected by

the Kabyles of being in the French interest, were murdered to a man.

Most of them understand and speak the Arabic, but they have also a

language of their own, called the Shilla or Sherwia, whose derivation

it has hitherto been impossible to discover. They profess Islamism,

but mix up with it many superstitions of their ancestors, and ascribe

certain virtues to the symbol of the cross, which they use as a

talisman and tattoo upon their persons. “It would seem from this,”

observes Captain Kennedy, “that at least the outward forms of the

early Christians had at one period penetrated into the heart of their

mountains.” That, however, like all that relates to the early history

of the Kabyles, is enveloped in doubt and obscurity.

A barbarous practice, prevalent in Algeria before the French invasion,

is still, Count St Marie tells us, adhered to by the Kabyles. The

amputation of a limb, instead of being surgically performed, is

effected by blow of a yataghan. The stump is then dipped into melted

pitch, to stop the bleeding. The barber is the usual operator. Until

the French came, regular physicians and surgeons were unknown in

Algeria.

Besides the Zouaves already referred to, the French have raised various

other corps expressly for African service. Conspicuous amongst these

are two regiments of light cavalry, composed of picked men, and known

as the “Chasseurs d’Afrique.” They are mounted on Arab horses; and in

order to obtain a sufficient supply, each tribe has to furnish a horse

as part of its yearly tribute. The arms of the Chasseurs are carbine,

sabre, and pistols; their equipment is light; their uniform plain, and

well suited to the nature of the service. Wherever engaged, they have

greatly distinguished themselves, and are proportionably esteemed in

the army of Africa. The reputation of the Spahis stands less high.

These consist of four regiments of native cavalry, under the command of

the Arab general Yussuf, whose history, as related by M. St Marie, is

replete with romantic incident. It has been said that he is a native of

the island of Elba, and was captured, when yet a child, by a Tunisian

corsair. Sold to the Bey, he was placed as a slave in the seraglio, and

there remained until an intrigue with his master’s daughter compelled

him to seek safety on board a French brig, then about to join the fleet

destined to attack Algiers. He made the first campaign as interpreter

to the general-in-chief. His talents and heroic courage rapidly

advanced him, and when the first regiment of Spahis was raised, he

was appointed its colonel. Previously to that, he had rendered great

services to the French, especially at Bona, when that town was attacked

by Ben Aïssa. Landing from a brig of war with Captain d’Armandy and

thirty sailors, he threw himself into the citadel, then garrisoned

by the Turkish troops of Ibrahim, the former Bey of Constantina, who

professed to hold the town for the French government, but had left his

post. The Turks rose against their new leaders, and would have murdered

them, but for the energy of Yussuf, who killed two ringleaders with his

own hand, and then, heading the astounded mutineers, led them against

the besiegers, who were totally defeated. The exterior of this dashing

chief is exceedingly elegant and prepossessing. When at Paris he was

called “_le beau Yussuf_,” and caused quite a _furore_, especially

among the fair sex. His portrait may still be seen in the various

print-shops, side by side with Lamoricière, Bugeaud, and the other

“great guns” of the “_Armée d’Afrique_.”

The first Foreign Legion employed by the French in Africa was

transferred to Spain in 1835, and there used up, almost to a man.

Another has since been raised, composed of men of all countries--Poles,

Belgians, Germans of every denomination, a few Spanish Carlists, and

even two or three Englishmen; the legion, like most corps of the same

kind, is remarkable for the reckless valour and bad moral character of

its members. The Polish battalion is the best and most distinguished.

The others are not to be trusted; and only a very severe system of

punishments preserves something like discipline in their ranks, where

adventurers, deserters, and escaped criminals are the staple commodity.

Bad as they are, they are eclipsed by the condemned regiments, known

by the slang name of “Les Zephyrs” These are punished men, considered

ineligible to serve again in their former regiments, and who are

put together on the principle of there being no danger of contagion

where all are infected. A taught hand is kept over them; they are

insubordinate in quarters, but dare-devils in the field. It will easily

be imagined that the duties assigned to these convict battalions

are neither the most agreeable nor the least perilous. At present,

however, a detachment is employed on no unpleasant service, the care

of a experimental military farm, near the camp of El Arrouch, in the

district of Constantina. Here they cultivate a considerable tract of

land, both farm and garden, breed cattle, and supply the colonists

with seeds, fruit-trees, and so forth. Workshops are attached to the

farm, for the manufacture of agricultural implements. The men who

work as artisans receive three-pence, and the field labourers three

halfpence, in addition to their daily pay. “Since the commencement of

the experiment,” says Captain Kennedy, “the offences that have been

committed bear but a small proportion to those that formerly occurred

during a similar period in garrison.” In these days of reform in our

military system, might not some hints be taken from such innovations

as these? If employment is found to diminish crime amongst a troop of

convicts, it might surely be expected to do as much in regiments to

which no stigma is attached, and the vices of those members are often

solely to be attributed to idleness and its concomitant temptations.

Of few men so largely talked of, and so justly celebrated, is so

little positively known as of Abd-el-Kader. The contradictory accounts

obtained from the tribes, the narratives of prisoners, who, from their

very condition, were precluded from gathering other than partial and

uncertain information, compose all the materials hitherto afforded for

the history of this remarkable chieftain. Even his age is a matter of

doubt, and has been variously stated, although it appears probable

that he is now about forty years old. Seeing the great difficulty of

obtaining authentic information, Captain Kennedy has abstained from

nore than a brief reference to the Emir. At the period of his visit,

Abd-el-Kader was not in the field, and his whereabout was very vaguely

known--the French believing him to be “somewhere on the frontiers

of Morocco.” In the absence, therefore, of trustworthy data, and of

opportunities of personal observation, the captain says little on

the subject. His reserve is unimitated by M. St Marie, who not only

gives a detailed account of the Arab sultan, but prefixes to his book

a portrait of that personage, with whom he claims to have had an

interview. As regards the portrait, it may be as much like Abd-el-Kader

as any other of the half-dozen we have met with, no two of which bore

any similitude to each other. The account of the interview is rather

marvellous. During his stay in the city of Algiers, M. St Marie went to

breakfast with a young Belgian acquaintance, and found an Arab seated

in his friend’s room, smoking a pipe. Refreshments were offered to the

stranger, and, whilst he discussed them, the count had an opportunity

of studying his countenance. He was struck with the dignity of his

manner and deportment, and with his air of intellectual superiority,

and was given to understand that he was sheik of a tribe friendly to

the French. Breakfast over, the Arab departed. Two days afterwards,

M. St Marie met his Belgian entertainer. “You were very fortunate the

other day,” said the latter; “the Arab whom you saw, when breakfasting

with me, was no other than the Emir himself.” And he proceeded to

relate how Abd-el-Kader had entered the city with a party of peasants,

carrying some chickens, which he sold in the marketplace, to prevent

suspicion of his real character. He pledged his word to the truth of

this statement, of whose accuracy the count appears satisfied. His

readers will possibly be more incredulous. As a traveller’s story, the

“yarn” may pass muster, and is, perhaps, not much out of place in the

book where it is found. With it we conclude our notice of the rival

“Algerias.” Those who desire further details of Bedouin douars and

French encampments, of camels and Kabyles, razzias and the like, may

seek and find them in the chronicle of the English captain, and the

varied, but less authentic pages of the foreign count.

HOW TO BUILD A HOUSE AND LIVE IN IT.

NO. II.

We spent last Sunday at Figgins’s at Brixton, No. 2, Albert Terrace,

Woodbine Lane. A hearty fellow: good glass of port: prime cigar: snug

box in the garden: and a bus every five minutes at the end of the road:

a regular A.1. place for a Sunday out, and home again in an hour and

a half to our paradise at ----; but we are not going to give you our

address, or we should be pestered to death with your visits. Suffice it

to say that Figgins’s is a good specimen of a citizen’s villa _near_

London. Now, there are several kinds of villas: there is the villa

near London, and the villa not near: there is the villa in a row,

and the detached villa: there is your lodge, and your park, and your

grange, and your cottage _ornée_; and best of all, in our opinion,

there is--what is neither the one nor the other of all these--there is

the plain old-fashioned country-house:--once a cottage, then a farm,

then a gentleman’s house: irregular, odd, picturesque, unpretending,

comfortable, and convenient. But Figgins’s is a new slap-up kind of

affair; built within the last two years, and uniting in itself all

the last improvements and the most recent elegancies. He has settled

himself in a neighbourhood quite the genteelest of that genteel

district: for, though merchants and men of yesterday, so to speak,

the people of Albert Terrace show that they have respect for the good

times of yore, and they admire the character of the fine old English

gentleman: they pride themselves, moreover, on being a steady set of

people, and they show their respect for things ancient even in the

outward arrangements of their dwellings. Thus you enter each of the

twenty little gardens surrounding each of the twenty little detached

houses, through gates with Norman pillars at their sides, that would

have done honour to Durham or Canterbury; while the wooden barriers

themselves are none of your radical innovations on the Greek style, nor

any of your old impious fox-hunting five-bars, but beautiful pieces

of fretwork, copied from the stalls of Exeter Cathedral, painted so

nicely in oak, and so well varnished, that Stump the painter must

have out-stumped himself in their execution. Once within the gate,

however, and the connecting wall--capped, we ought to have said, with

a delicious Elizabethan cornice--all Gothic formality ends for the

while; and you are lost in astonishment at the serpentine meanderings,

the flowing lines, and the thousand attractions of the garden. An

ill-natured friend, who went with us, took objection at the weeping

ash, in the middle of the circular grass-plot in front of the door; but

he altered his mind in the evening, when he found the chairs ranged

under its sociable branches--and the Havannahs and sherry-coblers

crowding the little table made to fit round the central stem. ’Twas

a wrinkle that which he was not up to:--he was a Goth--a cockney.

Figgins, though a Londoner, knows what’s what, in matters of that kind;

and shows his good taste in such a practical combination of the _utile_

with the _dulce_. On either side of the house, the pathways ran off

with the most mysterious windings among the rhododendrons and lilac

bushes, and promised a glimpse of better things in the garden behind,

when we should have passed through our host’s _atrium, aula, porticus_,

and _viridarium_. Figgins’s house has its main body, or _corps de

logis_, composed of two little bits of wings, and a wee little retiring

centre--the former have their gables capped with the most elaborate

“barge-boards,” as the architects term them, all fretwork and filigree,

and swell out below into bay windows, with battlements at top big

enough for Westminster Abbey. The centre has a narrow and exceedingly

Gothic doorway, and one tiny bit of a window over it, through which no

respectably-sized mortal has any chance of getting his head: and again

over this is a goodly shield, large enough to contain the blazoned

arms of all the Figginses. The builder has evidently gone upon the

plan of making the most of his design in a small compass; but he has

committed the absurdity first of allowing subsidiary parts to become

principals, and then of making the ornaments more important than the

spaces: thus the centre is squeezed to death like a nut in a pair of

crackers, and battlements, boards, and shield “engross us whole,” by

the obtrusiveness of their size and workmanship. Nevertheless, this

façade, such as it is, struck us as beating Johnson’s house, in Paragon

Place, all to nothing: there was something like the trace of an idea

in it, there was an aim, or a pretension, at something: whereas the

other is really nothing at all, and its appearance indicates absolute

vacuity in the central cerebral regions of its inventor. Figgins has

two good rooms on the ground floor, a lobby and staircase between them,

to keep the peace between their occupants, three good bed-rooms on his

first, and four very small ones up amongst his gables: add to which,

that he boasts of what he calls his future dressing-room, but what his

wife says is to be her boudoir--we forget where--but somewhere up the

stairs. All this again is much better than the Paragon Place plan--it

shows that men recover somewhat of their natural good sense when they

get into country air.

Figgins has not got a great deal of room in his villa, it is true;

but he and his nineteen neighbours are all suitably lodged; and

when they all go up to the Bank every morning in the same omnibus,

can congratulate themselves on emerging each from his own undivided

territory; or when they all come down again in the afternoon, each in

a different vehicle--(you never meet the same faces in the afternoon

that you do in the morning trip: we know not why, but so it is, and

the fact should be signalized to the Statistical Society)--they can

each perambulate their own eighth of an acre with their hands under

their coat-tails in solemn dignity; or their wife, while awaiting their

arrival, and listening to the beef-steaks giving an extra fiz, wanders

round and round again, or, like a Virgil’s crow,

“Secum sola magnâ spatiatur arenâ.”

If Figgins had but insisted on having the back of his residence

plastered and painted to look more natural than stone, the same as the

front--or, better still, if his ambition could have contented itself

with the plain unsophisticated original brick, we should say nothing

against his taste--’tis peculiar certainly, but he’s better off than

Johnson.

On the opposite side of Woodbine Lane, some wretch of a builder is

going to cut off the view of the Albert Terrace people all over

the narrow field, as far as the brick kilns, by erecting a row of

contiguous dwellings some three or four storeys high, besides garrets,

and they are to be in the last Attic style imported. One word is enough

for them: the man who knowingly and voluntarily goes out of town to

live in a house in a row, like those lines of things in the Clapham

Road or at Hammersmith, deserves to be sent with his house to “eternal

smash;” he is an animal below the range of æsthetics, and is not worth

remonstrating with.

One of these next days, when we take our hebdomadal excursion, we

intend going to see old Lady de Courtain at Lowlands Abbey, near ----;

you can get to it in about twenty minutes by the Great Western. It

is no abbey in reality, you know; there never was any Foundation on

the spot further than what Sam Curtain, when he was an upholsterer

in Finsbury, and before he got knighted, had laid down in the swampy

meadow which he purchased, and thus bequeathed to his widow: but it’s

all the same; it looks like an abbey;--that is to say, there are plenty

of turrets, and the windows have all labels over their heads, and there

are two Gothic conservatories, and two Gothic lodges at each of the two

Gothic gates; and there is a sham ruin at the end of the “Lake:” and if

this is not as good as a real abbey, we should like to know what is.

Old Lady de Courtain was perfectly justified in Normanizing her name

and her house:--why should she not? she had plenty of money: had she

been a man, she could have bought a seat for half a dozen boroughs,

and might even have gone a step higher; but, as it is, she has married

her eldest daughter to the eldest son of Sir Thomas Humbug, a new Whig

baronet; and she calls her house as she pleases. We applaud the old

lady’s spirit; she has two other daughters still on the stocks, and she

gives good dinners; we shall certainly go and patronize her. Comfort

for comfort, we are not quite sure but that we had rather take up our

quarters with John Bold, Esq., at Hazel House, on the top of the hill

opposite. It is quite a different-looking mansion, and yet the rooms

are laid out nearly on the same plan: in the one all is Gothic, in

the other all is classic: one is be-fretted, and be-pinnacled, and

be-shafted, and be-buttressed; but the other has a good plain Tuscan

portico, like St Paul’s in Covent-Garden--plain windows wide and high,

at enormous distances from each other--sober chimney-pots, that look

as if they were really meant to be smoked, and not a single gimcrack

or fanciful device any where about the building. It’s only a brick

house plastered, after all; but it has a certain air of ease and

comfort and respectability about it, that corresponds to a nicety with

the character of its worthy inmate. If the door were wide enough, you

might turn a coach and pair in the dining-room; there is a good, wide,

low-stepped staircase; you may come down it four-a-breast, and four

steps at a time, if you like--and if it were well behaved so to do, but

it isn’t; and your bedroom would make two of Figgins’s drawing-rooms,

lobby and all. The house always looks to us as if it would last longer

than Lady de Courtain’s; and so we think it will; just as we doubt not

but that honest John Bold’s dirty acres will be all in their proper

places when Lady de C.’s three per cents shall be down at forty-two

again, and her houses in the city shall be left empty by their bankrupt

tenants. They live, too, in a very different way, and in widely

distinct circles: at the Abbey you meet many an ex-civic notoriety,

and many a rising hope of Lombard Street: it is a perpetual succession

of dinners, dances, and picnics: at the House you are sure to be

introduced to some sober-faced, top-booted, elderly gentleman or other,

and to one or two rotund black-skirted individuals; and you find a good

horse at your service every morning, or the keeper is ready for you

in proper time and season; and sometimes the county member calls in,

or a quorum of neighbouring magistrates sit there in solemn conclave.

One is the house of to-day, the other of yesterday: one keeps up the

reminiscences of the town, and of a peculiar part of the town, rather

too strongly; the other actually smells of the country, and, though so

near the metropolis, has nothing with it in common. Their owners, when

they go to town, live, one in the Regent Park, the other in Park Lane.

Another acquaintance of ours--and this we will say that we are proud

of being known to him--dwells in an old-fashioned gloomy house at

Petersham. It is a respectable old gentleman in a brown coat, black

shorts, white waistcoat, and a pigtail; and is a member of the Royal

Society as well as of the Society of Antiquarians. The house in

question suits him, and he suits the house; it was built in the time

of that impudent intriguing Dutchman who came over here and drove out

his uncle and _beau-père_; and it accordingly possesses all the heavy

dignity of the Dutch houses of that period. The windows are pedimented

and cased with mouldings; they are lofty and sufficiently numerous;

the doorway has two cherubs flying, with cabbages and roses round the

shell that hangs over it; and the lawns are still cut square, and

have queer-shaped beds and parterres. There is something dignified

and solemn in the very bricks of the mansion, wearing as they do a

more regular and sombre hue of red than the dusty-looking things of

the present day; and when you once get into the spacious rooms, all

floored and pannelled with oak, you feel a glow of veneration for

olden times--though not for _those_ times--that you cannot define,

but which is nevertheless excessively pleasing. While sitting in the

well-stored library of this mansion, you expect to see Addison walking

in at the one door, and Swift at another; and you are not quite sure

but that you may have to meet Bolingbroke at dinner, and take a glass

of wine with Prior or Pope. There are numberless large cupboards all

over the place; you could sit inside any of the fireplaces, if the

modern grates were, as we wish them, removed: and as for opening or

slamming a door in a hurry, it is not to be done; they are too heavy;

no such impertinences can ever be tolerated in such a residence. And

then our friend himself--we could tell you such a deal about him, but

we are writing about houses, not men--you must go and get introduced

to him yourself. Let it be put down in your pocket memoranda, whenever

you hear of a house of this kind to let, either take it yourself or

recommend somebody else whom you have a regard for to do so. It is not

a handsome, stylish kind of house; but it is one of the right sort to

live in.

Very little is to be said in blame, much in praise, of the majority of

English country gentlemen’s houses; if atrocities of taste be committed

any where, it is principally near the metropolis, where people are only

half-and-half rural, or rather are of that _rus-in-urbe_ kind, that is

in its essence thoroughly cockney. There is every variety of mansion

throughout the land, every combination of style, and more often the

absence of all style at all; and in most cases the houses, at least the

better kind of them, are evidently made to suit the purposes of the

dweller rather than the architect. This ought to be the true rule of

building for all dwellings, except in the cases of those aristocratic

palaces or _châteaux_ where the public character of the owner requires

a sacrifice of private convenience to public dignity. Houses that are

constructed in accordance with the requirements of those that are to

live in them, and that are suited to the exigencies of their ground and

situation, are sure to please longer, and to gratify the taste of a

greater number of persons, than those which are the mere embodyings of

an architect’s portfolio. This, however, requires that the principles

of the architect should be allowed to vary from the strict proportions

of the classic styles;--or rather, that he should be allowed to copy

the styles of civil architecture, whether of Greece or Rome, or of

ancient Europe. The fault hitherto has been, that designers of houses

have taken all their ideas, models, and measurements from the religious

rather than the civil buildings of antiquity; and that they have

thought the capitals of the Jupiter Stator more suited to an English

gentleman’s residence than the capricious yet elegant decorations of a

villa at Pompeii. In the same way, until very lately, those who call

themselves “Gothic Architects” have been putting into houses windows

from all the cathedrals and monasteries of the country, but have seldom

thought of copying the more suitable details of the many mansions and

castellated houses that still exist. Better sense and better taste

are now beginning to prevail, and we observe excellent houses rising

around us. Of these, by far the larger proportion are in the styles of

the Middle Ages; and for this reason, that the architects who practise

in those styles have a wider field to range in for their models, and

have also more thoroughly emancipated themselves from their former

professional thraldom. There is also a very decided reaction in the

public taste in favour of the arts of the Middle Ages, or rather let

us say, in favour of a style of national architecture;--and as the

Greek and Roman styles have little to connect them with the historical

associations of an Englishman’s mind, they have fallen into comparative

disfavour. For one purely classic house now erected, there are three or

four Gothic. The worst of it is, however, that from the low state into

which architecture had fallen by the beginning of the present century,

and even for some time afterwards, there has been no sufficient space

and opportunity for creating a number of good architects adequate to

meet the demands of the public; and hence, the greatest barbarisms

are being daily perpetrated, even with the best intentions of doing

the correct thing, both on the part of the man who orders a building,

and of him who builds. Architecture is a science not to be acquired

in a day, nor by inspiration;--nor will the existence of one eminent

man in that profession immediately cause a hundred others of the

same stamp to rise up around him. On the contrary, it requires a

long course of scientific study, and of actual scientific practice;

it demands that a great quantity of traditionary precepts be kept

up, and handed down from master to pupil through many generations of

students and practitioners: it requires the accumulation of an enormous

number of good instances and examples; and in most cases it is to be

polished by long foreign travel. Now, all this cannot be accomplished

in an impromptu, off-hand manner: the profession of architecture

requires to be raised and kept up at a certain height of excellence

through many long years: it is like the profession of medicine, of

law, or the study of all scientific matters: when once the school of

architecture declines, the practice of it declines in the same ratio,

and the resuscitation of it becomes a work of considerable time. Such

a regenerating of architecture is going on amongst us: comparatively

more money is now laid out on buildings than at any preceding period

for the last hundred years: our architects are becoming more scientific

and more accomplished: the profession is occupying a higher rank than

it has lately done; and we may, therefore, hope for an increasing

proportion of satisfactory results. If only the public eye be

cultivated and refined in a similar degree, we may reasonably expect

that some beautiful and notable works will be executed.

Not, however, to launch forth into the wide question of architectural

fitness and beauty, we will confine our observations to two special

topics; one concerning the ornamentation of architectural objects, the

other concerning the materials used in private dwellings.

Thank goodness for it! but people are now beginning to see rather

further than six inches beyond their noses, and to find out that if

they adopt ornament as the starting point, and usefulness as the

goal of their architectural course, they are likely to end in the

committing of some egregious folly. Private persons are more convinced

of this truth than public ones; and the unprofessional crowd more than

professed architects. In the one case, as ornament costs dear, the

pocket puts an effectual drag on the vagaries of taste; whereas, in the

other, public money is most commonly spent without any virtual control:

and again, all architects are liable to descend to the prettinesses of

their profession rather than abide by the great qualities of properly

balanced proportion and design. A bad architect, too, is always

seeking after ornament to conceal his mistakes of construction. In

private houses, therefore, the superabundance of bad ornament that

was adopted after a period of its almost total disuse is now giving

way to a moderate employment of it; but, in public buildings, the

rage for covering blank spaces, and for getting rid of sharp edges or

corners, still continues. Persons who have not inquired practically

into the matter can hardly believe how very meagre is the stock of

ornament with which nine architects out of ten set up in their trade;

looking at what they usually employ in the Greek or Roman style,

we observe that the details are generally debased clumsy copies of

antiques, jumbled together with much incongruity, and commonly altered

in proportions. We do not apply this to capitals and bases, which are

now worked with tolerable precision, though even in these we observe

a heaviness of hand and eye that detracts greatly from their effect;

we refer more particularly to mouldings, and to the decoration of

cornices and friezes. Any one who has visited the galleries of the

Vatican, or wandered over the Acropolis of Athens, will recollect

the broad freedom and spirit with which the most graceful details

are treated, and the total absence of stiffness or heaviness in any

of the designs; whereas, whoever takes the trouble of lounging about

London must prepare his eye for that overload of thick heavy ornament

which characterises what is now called the English style. The foliage

of Greece and Italy was well worked in those countries, because the

objects represented by the architectural sculptor were familiar to

his own and to the public eye; his own eye committed no blunder, nor

would the public eye have tolerated it. In the application, too, of

the human form to sculptured ornament, the proportions and harmonies

of the body were too well known and felt to allow of any egregious

errors taking place; hence, even in the decorating a frieze, the

wonderful taste and skill of the Greek and Roman artists fully appear;

whereas, in the hands of the English sculptor, such objects are purely

mythical--he knows them only by imagination, not by reality, and he

properly designates them as “fancy objects.” Hence their clumsiness,

their heaviness, and their incongruity. In all the ordinary details of

modern common house-building, the mouldings and enrichments ordinarily

used are of a very poor description; decorators lived for a long time

on the slender stores of the puerile and meretricious embellishments

adopted from the French, and translated, if we may so say, for the use

of the English public;--they had lost the boldness and originality

which made the style of Louis XIV. tolerable, or rather agreeable;

and they had substituted in its place the poorest and the cheapest

kind of details that could be worked. Let any one go and find out a

house in London, built between 1780 and 1810, and he will instantly

remark the meagreness of which we are speaking. Grosvenor Square and

the adjacent streets abound with houses of this kind; so does Portland

Place. Carlton House was one of the most notable examples. In the stead

of this, after the war, came in a flood of Greek ornament; every thing

Roman was thrown aside; all was to be either Doric or Attic, with an

occasional admixture of the Egyptian: the Greek zig-zag, the Greek

honey-suckle and acanthus, Doric flutings and flat bands for cornices,

swarmed all over the land. Many an honest builder must have broken his

heart on the occasion, for his old ornament-books were no longer of

use; and he had, as it were, to learn his trade all over again. From

poor Batty Langley, with his five orders of Gothic architecture, who

was the type of architects towards the end of the last century, down

to Nash, Smirke, and Wilkins, who had it all their own way at the

beginning of the present, such was the commutation and revolution of

ornamental propriety. These styles were not the only ones that had to

go through changes of accessory parts, and to suffer from the caprices

of those that dressed them up for public exhibition: the revivers of

the mediæval styles, the new and old Gothic men, ran also their race

of absurdity and clumsy invention. It was long--very long, before they

could make any approach towards a proper understanding of the spirit

of their predecessors: all was to them a thorough mystery: and it is

actually only within the last ten years that any tolerable accuracy

has been attained in such matters. Norman capitals used to be put on

shafts of the 15th century, and perpendicular corbels used in early

English buildings: as for the tracery of windows, it was “confusion

worse confounded”--architects there ran quite mad. In these classes

of ornamental forms, the faults of awkward and ignorant imitators

have been equally apparent: for just as English sculptors have made

the Greek acanthus and olive twine and enwreath themselves like

Dutch cabbages and crab-trees, so the modern Gothics have made their

water-lilies, their ivy, their thistle, and their oak-leaves twist and

frizzle in præternatural stiffness--while their griffins and heraldic

monsters have ramped and regarded and displayed in the most awful and

mysterious manner. Gothic decorators, too, fell into the mistake of

over-ornamenting their objects far more than the pseudo-classical men

did: what used to be called Gothic ornament in 1820--no longer ago than

that--is now so intolerable that many an expensive building requires to

be re-erected ere it can square with the laws of common sense and good

taste. Gothic furniture-makers went wild in their peculiar art; and

there are still numberless magnificent drawing-rooms that require to

be entirely unfurnished ere their owners can lay claim to any portion

of decorative discernment. Eton Hall and Fonthill (while the latter

stood) were two notable instances of this lamentable excess of Gothic

absurdity. Windsor Castle is by no means free from blame; and in fact

there is hardly a Gothic house in England, of modern date, that does

not require the severe hand of the architectural reformer.

To hit the due medium in such matters is not easy; and the reason is,

that in architecture we are all imitators, not originators: we are all

aiming at renovating old things and restoring old buildings, rather

than at inventing new ones: and the result is, that architectural

genius and invention are thereby closely cramped and thwarted. To

imitate all the details of an old style in the closest manner is

indispensable when ancient buildings are to be restored, or when

an exact facsimile is to be produced in some new work: but for the

ornamental powers of the architect to be perpetually tied down to one

set class of forms, is to lower him to the level of a Chinese artist.

Unless we are mistaken, it appears to us that the Greeks imitated

nature in her most perfect and abstract forms of beauty: and that they,

with their successors the Romans, or rather the later Greeks, sought

for beautiful objects as adapted to architectural ornament, wherever

they could find them. They were not prevented by any traditional or

conventional proprieties from imitating and using the beautiful and the

natural wherever they might exist: all the varied forms of nature would

have come right to them had they been willing. They seem, however,

not to have taken so wide a range as we should have expected; or else

their works that have come down to us are so few in number that their

choice seems to have been rather restricted. The Middle Age architects

also took a wide or rather a free range in the forms of the vegetable

and animal world: but they worked with barbarous eyes and stiff hands;

nor till the twelfth century do they seem to have arrived at that

artistical freedom and correctness which are requisite to interpret and

to imitate the multiplex forms of the natural world. As for the human

figure, they confined themselves principally to draperied forms; and

they embued these with considerable elegance; nevertheless, through

all their operations, we trace a want of anatomical knowledge, which

not all their ready invention can conceal, and which is scarcely

compensated by the value of their sculpture, as a contemporaneous

illustration of mediæval history. Heraldry seems always to have been

a mystic and a mythic art; and hence heraldic forms have a certain

privilege of caricature and distortion from which it is in vain to try

to emancipate them.

Such being the case, it becomes a question--how should modern ornament

be composed? In the classic style, are we always to adhere to foreign

foliage, foreign animals, and mythological figures: and in the Gothic

style, are we always to preserve the same rigidity and distortion

which prevailed as long as those styles were in actual practice? We

apprehend the true rule of æsthetics in this case to be, as we implied

before, that for restorations or exact facsimiles of buildings, whether

classical or mediæval, the very form as well as the spirit of the

ornaments contemporaneously used in such buildings should be most

strictly adopted. An imitation, unless it is an exact one, is good for

nothing, as far as architecture is concerned. But should we prevail on

ourselves either to depart from these styles, or to carry out their

main principles, so as to form a national style of our own--not a fixed

one, but a style varying through different ages, suiting itself to

the social requirements of each--then we should be prepared, not only

to call in the aid of natural beauty to the fullest extent, but also

to avail ourselves of all that rich fund of form which results from

the extensive use of scientific knowledge, and the investigation of

physical curves. There is no reason why such a style, or succession

of styles, should not be formed, if the great principles of science

and utility be taken as the substructure on which imagination may

afterwards raise its enrichment: and, if ever it come into existence,

we have the unlimited expanse of the universe to range through in

search of beauty and harmony. It is impossible to say what changes the

introduction of new mathematical forms may not produce, and produce

with good effect: thus the beautiful curve of the catena would not

have been known, but for the introduction of suspension bridges. The

application of the cycloid is comparatively modern, though the curve

itself is ancient; and the grand effect of the horizontal line was not

fully known--despite of Greece and Rome--till our interminable lines

of railroad had stretched their lengths across the land. In the same

way, our more extended and more intimate knowledge of the animal and

vegetable kingdom ought to furnish us with an immense variety of new

and beautiful forms of ornament--we do not mean of mythic or fanciful

ornament, but of that highest and best kind of decoration, absolute,

and yet partial, imitation of nature. Thus, for example, have we a

blank space, extending horizontally to a long distance, which we desire

to cover with enrichments. We have our choice, either in mathematical

forms and combination of forms, such as mediæval architects might

have applied, or else we may throw along it wreaths and branches of

foliage, peopled with insect life, or enlivened by birds and animals.

A succession of simple oak-branches or laurel-leaves, or the shoots of

any other common plants, faithfully imitated, and cut into mimic life,

from the inanimate stone, would form an ornament of the most effective

kind, and would constitute a work of art, being an intelligent and

poetical interpretation of natural beauty. In the building of our

houses, why should the straight line and sections of the circle be the

only lines admissible for doors, windows, and roofs? Why should the

Greek and Roman ovolo, cavetto, and square, be the only combination

that we know of in our common mouldings? How much richer were the

architects of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, who drew with

“free hands,” and gave us such exquisite effects of light and shade!

We are firmly persuaded, that an architect, deeply imbued with the

scientific principles of his profession, and endowed, at the same time,

with the hand and the eye of a skilful artist, may cause a most happy

and useful reformation of our national architecture.

In our choice of materials for our common buildings, it appears

that we are always struggling with a deficiency of pecuniary means:

for we never yet met an architect whose skill was not thwarted, in

this respect, by the necessities of his employer. Such a man would

have built a splendid palace, only he was not allowed to use stone;

another would have made a magnificent hall, had he been able to employ

oak instead of deal. Whenever people are so situated that they are

restricted in their choice of materials, they should remember that they

are immediately limited, both in construction and in decorative forms;

and, being so limited, it becomes an absurdity in them to aim at any

thing that is unreal, any thing that is in fact beyond their means.

This has been one of the curses of all architectural and ornamental

art in modern times, that every thing has been imitative, fictitious,

sham, make-believe:--brick is stuccoed to look like stone, and fir is

painted to look like oak. It is impossible for art to flourish when

an imitative object can be accepted in the place of original ones;

for when once public taste becomes so much vitiated as to be easily

satisfied with cheap copies of the real instead of the real itself,

the productive faculties of the artist and the manufacturer take a

wrong turn, and go directly to increase rather than diminish the

evil. On architecture, the effects of a corrupted national desire for

the cheap and the easily made are peculiarly disastrous: this being

the least suited of all arts to any thing like deception, since, to

be good, it must be essentially real and true. Hence it has arisen,

that instead of being content with humble brick, and learning how

to convert that material to purposes of ornamentation, the use of

stucco and cement has become universal--materials totally unsuited to

our country and climate. The decorative portion of architecture has

fallen into the same track, and elaborate looking things in plaster,

and fifty other substances--in the production of which art has had

no share--have come to cover our ceilings and our walls. Had not,

indeed, the repairs and erection of public buildings called forth the

dormant skill of our workmen, decorative art had long since become

extinct amongst us. It may therefore be taken as a fundamental rule

in architecture, that the decorations of buildings should be made

either of the same materials as the edifices themselves, or that more

costly substances should be combined with the former, and should serve

for the decorator to exercise his skill on. Thus the combination of

stone with brick, an old-fashioned expedient, is good, because it is

justified by all the exigencies of constructive skill, and because it

is founded on common sense. Look for what effective buildings may be

thus produced at Lincoln’s Inn, the Temple, St James’s, and several

of our colleges in the universities: how intrinsically superior are

these to the flimsy shabby buildings of Regent Street and its Park:

even old Buckingham House was good in comparison with some of these.

Or go to Hampton Court and Kensington, and see how much grandeur may

be produced by proportions and well-combined decoration, without any

cement, stucco, or paint, to bedizen the walls. If a man cannot be

content to adopt plain brick with such instances as these before his

eyes, let him travel forth a little, and see what the effect of the

great brick buildings is in Holland, or the south-west of France, where

the most admirable churches and public edifices are all erected of this

material. Sculptured ornament is of course out of the question in such

a case as this: nothing but stone will bear the chisel and mallet to

produce any effect that shall satisfy the eye and the judgment of the

lover of natural beauty.

We protest strongly against all _terra-cotta_ imitations of sculptural

forms; but for geometrical figure they are allowable, and their

stiffness, if justified by sufficient solidity, will be found highly

suitable for buildings of such a kind.

Whenever the means of the employer are ample enough, let him make up

his mind to sink a little additional capital, and build a good stone

house, that shall last him and his family for a couple of centuries,

instead of a rickety edifice, that can endure for only a couple of

generations. And, in this case, let him call in the decorative aid of

the architect, to whatever amount his taste dictates. Ornament, to be

effective, need not be abundant; it should be employed sparingly rather

than the contrary; and, if kept in its proper place, and limited to

its due purposes, it will reward its owner’s eye, and will prove a

permanent source of artificial satisfaction. Good stone-work without,

and good oak-work within, will make a house that a prince may live in.

A good house, well built and well decorated, is like a good coat--there

is some pleasure in wearing it; it will last long, and look well the

whole time; it will bear reparation; and (though we cannot say the same

of any short-cut, upper Benjamin, or jacket we ever wore--we wish we

could) it will always fetch the price given for it. We have plenty of

the finest stone and timber within this snug little island of ours,

and it is entirely our own fault that we are not one of the best-built

people in the universe.

HOW I BECAME A YEOMAN.

CHAPTER I.

Had the royal army of Israel been accoutred after the colour and

fashion of the British battalions, I am quite satisfied that another

enigma would have been added by King Solomon to his special list of

incomprehensibilities. The extraordinary fascination which a red coat

exercises over the minds and optics of the fair sex, appears to me a

greater phenomenon than any which has been noticed by Goethe in his

Theory of the Development of Colours. The same fragment of ensanguined

cloth will irritate a bull, charm a viper, and bewitch the heart

of a woman. No civilian, however good-looking or clean-limbed--and

I rather pique myself upon my pins--has the ghost of a chance when

opposed in the lists of love to an officer, a mail-guard, a whipper-in,

or a postman. You may be as clever a fellow as ever coopered up an

article for the Magazine, as great a poet as Byron, in beauty an

Antinous, in wit a Selwyn, in oratory a Canning--you may dance like

Vestris, draw like Grant, ride like Alexander; and yet, with all these

accomplishments, it is a hundred chances to one that your black coat,

although fashioned by the shears and polished by the goose of Stultz,

will be extinguished by the gaudy scarlet habiliments of a raw-boned

ensign, emancipated six months ago, for the first time in his life,

from the wilderness of a Highland glen, and even now as awkward a cub

as ever presumed to plunge into the perils of a polka.

Let no man, nor woman either, consider these observations flummery or

verbiage. They are my calm deliberate opinions, written, it is true,

under circumstances of considerable irritation, but nevertheless

deliberate. I have no love to the army, for I have been sacrificed for

a dragoon. My affections have been slighted, my person vilified, my

professional prospects damaged, and my constitution fearfully shaken in

consequence of this military mania. I have made an idiot of myself in

the eyes of my friends and relatives. I have absolutely gone upon the

turf. I have lost some valuable inches of epidermis, and every bone of

my body feels at the present moment as sore as though I were the sole

survivor of a terrific railway collision. A more injured individual

than myself never mounted upon a three-legged stool, and from that high

altitude I now hurl down defiance and anathemas upon the regulars, be

they horse or foot, sappers or miners, artillery, pioneers, or marines!

It was my accursed fate to love, and love in vain. I do not know

whether it was the eye or the instep, the form or the voice, of Edith

Bogle, which first drew my attention, and finally fascinated my

regards, as I beheld her swimming swan-like down the Assembly Rooms at

the last Waverley Ball. A more beautiful representative of Die Vernon

could not have been found within the boundary of the three kingdoms.

Her rich auburn hair flowed out from beneath the crimson network which

strove in vain to confine within its folds that bright luxuriant

sea--on her brow there lay one pearl, pure as an angels tear--and oh!

sweet even to bewilderment was the smile that she cast around her, as,

resting upon the arm of the moody Master of Ravenswood, she floated

away--a thing of light--in the mazy current of the waltz! I shall not

dwell now upon the circumstances of the subsequent introduction; on the

delicious hour of converse at the supper-table; or on the whispered,

and--as I flattered myself--conscious adieux, when, with palpitating

heart, I veiled her fair shoulders with the shawl, and felt the soft

pressure of her fingers as I tenderly assisted her to her chair. I went

home that night a lovesick Writer to the Signet. One fairy form was the

sole subject of my dreams, and next morning I woke to the conviction,

that without Edith Bogle earth would be a wilderness, and even the

bowers of Paradise damp, chilly, and uncomfortable.

There is no comfort in looking back upon a period when hope was

high and unchecked. I have met with men who, in their maudlin

moments--usually towards the close of the evening--were actuated by an

impulse similar to that which compelled the Ancient Mariner to renew

his wondrous tale: and I have heard them on such occasions recount the

whole circumstances of their unfortunate wooing with voices choked by

grief, and with tears of tender imbecility. I have observed, however,

that, on the morrow succeeding such disclosures, these gentlemen

have invariably a shy and sheepish appearance, as though inwardly

conscious that they had extended their confidence too far, and rather

dubious as to the sincerity of their apparent sympathizers. Warned by

their example, I hold it neither profitable nor wise to push my own

confessions too far. If Edith gave me at the outset more encouragement

than she ought to have done--if she systematically led me to believe

that I had made an impression upon her heart--if she honoured me

with a preference so marked, that it deceived not only myself, but

others--let the blame be hers. But why should I go minutely into the

courtship of half a year? As difficult, indeed, and as futile, would it

be to describe the alternations of an April day, made up of sunshine

and of shower, of cloud and rainbow and storm--sometimes mild and

hopeful, then ominous of an eve of tempest. For a long time, I had

not the slightest suspicion that I had a rival. I remarked, indeed,

with somewhat of dissatisfaction, that Edith appeared to listen too

complacently to the commonplace flatteries of the officers who are the

habitual haunters of private ball and of public assembly. She danced

too often with Ensign Corkingham, flirted rather openly with Major

Chawser, and certainly had no business whatever to be present at a

military fête and champagne luncheon given at the Castle by these brave

defenders of their country. I was not invited to that fête, and the

circumstance, as I well remember, was the cause of a week’s coolness

between us. But it was not until Lieutenant Roper of the dragoons

appeared in the field that I felt any particular cause for uneasiness.

To give the devil his due, Roper was a handsome fellow. He stood

upwards of six feet in his boots, had a splendid head of curling black

hair, and a mustachio and whiskers to match. His nose was beautifully

aquiline, his eyes of the darkest hazel, and a perpetual smile, which

the puppy had cultivated from infancy, disclosed a box of brilliant

dominoes. I knew Roper well, for I had twice bailed him out of the

police-office, and, in return, he invited me to mess. Our obligations,

therefore, to each other might be considered as nearly equal--in

fact, the balance, if any, lay upon his side, as upon one occasion

he had won from me rather more than fifty pounds at ecarté. He was

not a bad fellow either, though a little slap-dash in his manner,

and somewhat supercilious in his cups; on which occasions--and they

were not unfrequent--he was by far too general in his denunciation

of all classes of civilians. He was, I believe, the younger son of a

Staffordshire baronet, of good connexions, but no money--in fact, his

patrimony was his commission, and he was notoriously on the outlook

for an heiress. Now, Edith Bogle was rumoured to have twenty thousand

pounds.

Judge then of my disgust, when, on my return on a rent-gathering

expedition to Argyleshire, I found Lieutenant Roper absolutely

domiciled with the Bogles. I could not call there of a forenoon on my

way from the Parliament-House, without finding the confounded dragoon

seated on the sofa beside Edith, gabbling away with infinite fluency

about the last ball, or the next review, or worsted-work, or some

similar abomination. I question whether he had ever read a single book

since he was at school, and yet there he sat, misquoting Byron to

Edith--who was rather of a romantic turn--at no allowance, and making

wild work with passages out of Tom Moore’s Loves of the Angels. How

the deuce he got hold of them, I am unable up to this day to fathom.

I suspect he had somehow or other possessed himself of a copy of the

“Beauties,” and dedicated an hour each morning to committing extracts

to memory. Certainly he never opened his mouth without enunciating some

rubbish about bulbuls, gazelles, and chibouques; he designated Edith

his Phingari, and swore roundly by the Koran and Kiebaubs. It was to me

perfectly inconceivable how any woman of common intellect could listen

to such egregious nonsense, and yet I could not disguise from myself

the consciousness of the fact, that Miss Bogle rather liked it than

otherwise.

Roper had another prodigious advantage over me. Edith was fond of

riding, an exercise to which, from my earliest years, I have had the

utmost abhorrence. I am not, I believe, constitutionally timid, and yet

I do not know almost any ordeal which I would not cheerfully undergo,

to save me from the necessity of passing along a stable behind the

heels of half a dozen stationary horses. Who knows at what moment the

concealed demon may be awaked within them? They are always either

neighing, or pulling at their halters, or stamping, or whisking their

tails, in a manner which is absolutely frightful; and it is impossible

to predict the exact moment they may select for lashing out, and, it

may be, scattering your brains by the force of a hoof most murderously

shod with half a hundred-weight of iron. The descent of Hercules to

Hades seems to me a feat of mere insignificance compared with the

cleaning out of the Augean stables, if, as I presume, the inmates were

not previously removed.

Roper, on the contrary, rode like a Centaur, or the late Ducrow. He

had several brutes, on one or other of which you might see him every

afternoon prancing along Princes Street, and he very shortly contrived

to make himself the constant companion of Edith in his daily rides.

What took place on these occasions, of course I do not know. It was,

however, quite clear to me, that the sooner this sort of thing was put

an end to the better; nor should I have cared one farthing had a civil

war broke out, if that event could have ensured to me the everlasting

absence of the pert and pestilential dragoon.

In this dilemma I resolved to make a confidante of my cousin Mary

Muggerland. Mary and I were the best possible friends, having flirted

together for five successive seasons, with intermissions, on a sort of

general understanding that nothing serious was meant, and that either

party was at liberty at any time to cry off in case of an extraneous

attachment. She listened to the history of my sorrows with infinite

complacency.

“I am afraid, George,” she said, “that you have no chance whatever: I

know Edith well, and have heard her say, twenty times over, that she

never will marry any man unless he belongs to the army.”

“Then I have been exceedingly ill-used!”

“O fie, George--I wonder at you! Do you think that nobody besides

yourself has a right to change their mind? How often, I should like to

know, have you varied your attachments during the last three years?”

“That is a very different matter, Mary.”

“Will you have the kindness to explain the difference?”

“Pshaw! is there no distinction between a mere passing flirtation and a

deep-rooted passion like mine?”

“I understand--this is the first time there has been a rival in the

case. Well--I am sorry I cannot help you. Rely upon it that Roper is

the man; and, to be plain with you, I am not at all surprised at it.”

“Mary!--what do you mean?”

“Do you really know so little of the sex as to flatter yourself that a

lively girl like Edith, with more imagination than wit, would prefer

you, who--pardon me, dear cousin--are rather a commonplace sort of

personage, to a gay young officer of dragoons? Why, don’t you see that

he talks more to her in one hour than you do in four-and-twenty? Are

not his manners more fascinating--his attentions more pointed--his

looks”----

“Upon my word, Miss Mary!” I exclaimed, “this _is_ going rather too

far. Do you mean to say that in point of personal appearance”----

“I do, indeed, George. You know I promised you to be candid.”

“Say no more. I see that you women are all alike. These confounded

scarlet coats”----

“Are remarkably becoming; and really I am not sure that in one of

them--if it were particularly well made--you might not look almost as

well as Roper.”

“I have half a mind to turn postman!”

“Not a bad idea for a man of letters. But why don’t you hunt?”

“I dislike riding.”

“You stupid creature! Edith never will marry you: so you may just as

well abandon the idea at once.”

So ended my conference with my cousin. I had made it a rule, however,

never to believe above one half of what Miss Mary Muggerland said;

and, upon the whole, I am inclined to think that was a most liberal

allowance of credulity. A young lady is not always the safest

depository of such secrets, or the wisest and most sound adviser. A

little spice of spite is usually intermingled with her counsels; and

I doubt whether in one case out of ten they sincerely wish success

to their simple and confiding clients. On one point, however, I was

inclined to think her right. Edith certainly had a decided military

bias.

I begin to think that there is more in judicial astrology than most

people are inclined to admit. To what other mysterious fount than the

stars can we trace that extraordinary principle which regulates men in

the choice of their different professions? Take half a dozen lads of

the same standing and calibre; give them the same education; inculcate

them with the same doctrines; teach them the identical catechism; and

yet you will find that in this matter of profession there is not the

slightest cohesion among them. Had I been born under the influence of

Mars, I too might have been a dragoon--as it was, Saturn, my planetary

godfather, had devoted me to the law, and here I stood a discomfited

concocter of processes, and a botcher of deeds and titles. Pondering

these things deeply, I made my way to the Parliament-House, then in the

full hum attendant upon the close of the Session. The usual groups of

the briefless were gathered around the stoves. As I happened to have a

paper in my hand, I was instantly assailed by half a dozen.

“Hallo, M’Whirter, my fine fellow--d’ye want a counsel? Set you down

cheap at a condescendence,” cried Mr Anthony Whaup, a tall barrister of

considerable facetiousness.

“I say, M’Whirter, is it a _semiplena_? Hand it over to Randolph; he

has lots of experience in that line.”

“Get out, you heretical humbug! Never mind these fellows, George. Tip,

and I’m your man,” said Randolph.

“Can any body tell me who is pleading before the Second Division just

now?” asked a youth, looking rather white in the gills.

“Old Windlass. He’s good for three quarters of an hour at least, and

then the judges have to give their opinions.”

“I’m devilish glad to hear it. I think I shall bolt.”

“Haven’t you got that case over yet, Prior?”

“No, nor sha’n’t for a week. A confounded count and reckoning, with

columns of figures as long as Anthony. Well, Scripio, how are stocks?”

“Rather shakey. What do you say to a shot at the Northerns?”

“O, hang Northerns! I burned my fingers with them a month ago,” replied

Randolph. “This seems a fine afternoon. Who’s for Musselburgh?”

“I can’t go to-day,” said Whaup. “I was tempted yesterday with a

shilling, and sold myself.”

“Who is the unfortunate purchaser?”

“Tom Hargate, crimp-general to the yeomanry.”

“I’m delighted to hear it, old fellow! We have been wanting you for

two years back in the corps. ’Gad! won’t we have fun when we go into

quarters. I say, M’Whirter--why don’t you become a yeoman?”

I started at the suggestion, which, strange to say, had never crossed

my mind before. There _was_ a way then open to me--a method left by

which I might satisfy, without compromising my professional character,

the scruples of Edith, and become a member of the military service

without abandoning the pen. The man that hesitates is lost.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I think I should rather like it. It seems a

pretty uniform.”

“Pretty!” said Randolph. “By the Lord Harry, it’s the splashest affair

possible! I’ll tell you what, M’Whirter, I’ll back you in the yeoman’s

jacket and pantaloons against the Apollo Belvidere.”

“It is regular Queen’s service, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is. Only we have no flogging.”

“That’s no great disadvantage. Well, upon my word, I have a great

mind”----

“Then, by Jove, there goes the very man! Hallo--Hargate, I say--Tom

Hargate!”

“What’s the row?”

“Here’s a new recruit for you. George M’Whirter, W.S. Book him down,

and credit me with the bounty money.”

“The Edinburgh squadron, of course,” said Hargate, presenting me with a

shilling.

“Don’t be in a hurry,” said one of my friends. “There are better

lancers than the Templars. The Dalmahoy die, but they never surrender!”

“Barnton _à la rescousse!_” cried another.

“No douking in the Dalkeith!” observed a third.

“Nonsense, boys! you are confounding him. M’Whirter and Anthony Whaup

shall charge side by side, and woe betide the insurgent who crosses

their path!” said Randolph. “So the sooner you look after your

equipments the better.”

In this identical manner was I nailed for the yeomanry.