driver of vicious horses, the immediate consequence to _him_ of this
unexpected limitation to a pair of horses was, that all his knavery in
one hour recoiled upon himself. The horses whom he had himself trained
to vice and restiveness, in the hope that thus his own services and
theirs might be less in request, now became the very curse of his life.
Every morning, duly as an attempt was made to put them in motion, they
began to back, and no arts, gentle or harsh, would for a moment avail to
coax or to coërce them into the counter direction. Could retrogression
by any metaphysics have been translated into progress, we excelled in
that; it was our _forte_; we could have backed to the North Pole. That
might be the way to glory, or at least to distinction--_sic itur ad
astra_; unfortunately, it was not the way to Dublin. Consequently, on
_every_ day of our journey--and the days were ten--not once, but
always, we had the same deadly conflict to repeat; and this being always
unavailing, found its solution uniformly in the following ultimate
resource. Two large-boned horses, usually taken from the plough, were
harnessed on as leaders. By main force they hauled our wicked wheelers
into the right direction, and forced them, by pure physical superiority,
into working. We furnished a joyous and comic spectacle to every town
and village through which we passed. The whole community, men and
children, came out to assist at our departure; and all alike were
diverted, but not the less irritated, by the demoniac obstinacy of
the brutes, who seemed under the immediate inspiration of the fiend.
Everybody was anxious to share in the scourging which was administered
to them right and left; and once propelled into a gallop (or such a
gallop as our Brobdignagian leaders could accomplish), they were forced
into keeping it up. But, without rehearsing all the details of the
case, it may be readily conceived that the amount of trouble distributed
amongst our whole party was enormous. Once or twice the friends at whose
houses we slept were able to assist us. But generally they either had
no horses, or none of the commanding power demanded. Often, again, it
happened, as our route was very circuitous, that no inns lay in our
neighborhood; or, if there _were_ inns, the horses proved to be of too
slight a build. At Ballinasloe, and again at Athlone, half the town came
out to help us; and, having no suitable horses, thirty or forty men,
with shouts of laughter, pulled at ropes fastened to our pole and
splinter-bar, and compelled the snorting demons into a flying gallop.
But, naturally, a couple of miles saw this resource exhausted. Then came
the necessity of "drawing the covers," as the dean called it; that is,
hunting amongst the adjacent farmers for powerful cattle. This labor (O,
Jupiter, thanks be for _that_!) fell upon Mr. Moran. And sometimes it
would happen that the horses, which it had cost him three or four hours
to find, could be spared only for four or five miles. Such a journey can
rarely have been accomplished. Our zigzag course had prolonged it into
from two hundred and thirty to two hundred and fifty miles; and it is
literally true that, of this entire distance from Westport House to
Sackville-street, Dublin, not one furlong had been performed under
the spontaneous impulse of our own horses. Their diabolic resistance
continued to the last. And one may venture to hope that the sense of
final subjugation to man must have proved penally bitter to the horses.
But, meantime, it vexes one that such wretches should be fed with
good old hay and oats; as well littered down also in their stalls as a
prebendary; and by many a stranger, ignorant of their true character,
should have been patted and caressed. Let us hope that a fate, to which
more than once they were nearly forcing _us_, namely, regress over a
precipice, may ultimately have been their own. Once I saw such another
case dramatically carried through to its natural crisis in the
Liverpool Mail. It was on the stage leading into Lichfield; there was no
conspiracy, as in our Irish case; one horse only out of the four was the
criminal; and, according to the queen's bench (Denman, C. J.), there
is no conspiracy competent to one agent; but he was even more signally
under a demoniac possession of mutinous resistance to man. The case was
really a memorable one. If ever there was a distinct proclamation
of rebellion against man, it was made by that brutal horse; and I,
therefore, being a passenger on the box, took a note of the case; and
on a proper occasion I may be induced to publish it, unless some Houynhm
should whinny against me a chancery injunction.
From these wild, Tartar-like stables of Connaught, how vast was the
transition to that perfection of elegance, and of adaptation between
means and ends, that reigned from centre to circumference through the
stables at Laxton! _I_, as it happened, could report to Lord Massey
their earlier condition; he to me could report their immediate changes.
I won him easily to an interest in my own Irish experiences, so fresh,
and in parts so grotesque, wilder also by much in Connaught than in Lord
Massey's county of Limerick; whilst he (without affecting any delight
in the hunting systems of Northamptonshire and Leicestershire) yet
took pleasure in explaining to me those characteristic features of the
English midland hunting as centralized at Melton, which even then gave
to it the supreme rank for brilliancy and unity of effect amongst all
varieties of the chase. [Footnote: If mere names were allowed to dazzle
the judgment, how magnificent to a gallant young Englishman of twenty
seems at first the _tiger-hunting_ of India, which yet (when examined
searchingly) turns out the meanest and most _cowardly_ mode of hunting
known to human experience. _Buffalo-hunting_ is much more dignified as
regards the courageous exposure of the hunter; but, from all accounts,
its excitement is too momentary and evanescent; one rifle-shot, and the
crisis is past. Besides that, the generous and honest character of the
buffalo disturbs the cordiality of the sport. The very opposite reason
disturbs the interest of lion-hunting, especially at the Cape. The lion
is everywhere a cowardly wretch, unless when sublimed into courage by
famine; but, in southern Africa, he is the most currish of enemies.
Those who fancied so much adventurousness in the lion conflicts of Mr.
Gordon Cumming appear never to have read the missionary travels of Mr.
Moffat. The poor missionary, without any arms whatever, came to think
lightly of half a dozen lions seen drinking through the twilight at
the very same pond or river as himself. Nobody can have any wish to
undervalue the adventurous gallantry of Mr. G. Cumming. But, in the
single case of the Cape lion, there is an unintentional advantage taken
from the traditional name of lion, as though the Cape lion were such as
that which ranges the torrid zone.]
Horses had formed the natural and introductory topic of conversation
between us. What we severally knew of Ireland, though in different
quarters,--what we both knew of Laxton, the barbaric splendor, and the
civilized splendor,--had naturally an interest for us both in their
contrasts (at one time so picturesque, at another so grotesque), which
illuminated our separate recollections. But my quick instinct soon made
me aware that a jealousy was gathering in Lord Massey's mind around
such a topic, as though too ostentatiously levelled to his particular
knowledge, or to his _animal_ condition of taste. But easily I slipped
off into another key. At Laxton, it happened that the library was
excellent. Founded by whom, I never heard; but certainly, when used by
a systematic reader, it showed itself to have been systematically
collected; it stretched pretty equably through two centuries,--namely,
from about 1600 to 1800,--and might, perhaps, amount to seventeen
thousand volumes. Lord Massey was far from illiterate; and his interest
in books was unaffected, if limited, and too often interrupted, by
defective knowledge. The library was dispersed through six or seven
small rooms, lying between the drawing-room in one wing, and the
dining-room in the opposite wing. This dispersion, however, already
furnished the ground of a rude classification. In some one of these
rooms was Lord Massey always to be found, from the forenoon to the
evening. And was it any fault of _his_ that his daughter, little Grace,
about two years old, pursued him down from her nursery every morning,
and insisted upon seeing innumerable pictures, lurking (as she had
discovered) in many different recesses of the library? More and more
from this quarter it was that we drew the materials of our daily
after-dinner conversation. One great discouragement arises commonly to
the student, where the particular library in which he reads has been so
disordinately collected that he cannot _pursue_ a subject once started.
Now, at Laxton, the books had been so judiciously brought together, so
many hooks and eyes connected them, that the whole library formed what
one might call a series of _strata_, naturally allied, through which you
might quarry your way consecutively for many months. On rainy days,
and often enough one had occasion to say through rainy weeks, what a
delightful resource did this library prove to both of us! And one day
it occurred to us, that, whereas the stables and the library were both
jewels of attraction, the latter had been by much the least costly.
Pretty often I have found, when any opening has existed for making the
computation, that, in a library containing a fair proportion of books
illustrated with plates, about ten shillings a volume might be taken
as expressing, upon a sufficiently large number of volumes, small and
great, the fair average cost of the whole. On this basis, the library
at Laxton would have cost less than nine thousand pounds. On the other
hand, thirty-five horses (hunters, racers, roadsters, carriage-horses,
etc.) might have cost about eight thousand pounds, or a little more.
But the library entailed no permanent cost beyond the annual loss of
interest; the books did not eat, and required no aid from veterinary
[Footnote: "_Veterinary_."--By the way, whence comes this odd-looking
word? The word _veterana_ I have met with in monkish writers, to express
_domesticated quadrupeds_; and evidently from that word must have
originated the word _veterinary_. But the question is still but one step
removed; for, how came _veterana_ by that acceptation in rural economy?]
surgeons; whereas, for the horses, not only such ministrations were
intermittingly required, but a costly permanent establishment of
grooms and helpers. Lord Carbery, who had received an elaborate Etonian
education, was even more earnestly a student than his friend Lord
Massey, who had probably been educated at home under a private tutor.
He read everything connected with general politics (meaning by _general_
not personal politics) and with social philosophy. At Laxton, indeed;
it was that I first saw Godwin's "Political Justice;" not the second and
emasculated edition in _octavo_, but the original _quarto_ edition, with
all its virus as yet undiluted of raw anti-social Jacobinism.
At Laxton it was that I first saw the entire aggregate labors,
brigaded, as it were, and paraded as if for martial review, of that most
industrious benefactor to the early stages of our English historical
literature, Thomas Hearne. Three hundred guineas, I believe, had been
the price paid cheerfully at one time for a complete set of Hearne. At
Laxton, also, it was that first I saw the total array of works edited
by Dr. Birch. It was a complete _armilustrium_, a _recognitio_, or
mustering, as it were, not of pompous Praetorian cohorts, or unique
guardsmen, but of the yeomanry, the militia, or what, under the old
form of expression, you might regard as the _trained bands_ of our
literature--the fund from which ultimately, or in the last resort,
students look for the materials of our vast and myriad-faced literature.
A French author of eminence, fifty years back, having occasion to speak
of our English literature collectively, in reference to the one point
of its _variety_, being also a man of honor, and disdaining that sort
of patriotism which sacrifices the truth to nationality, speaks of
our pretensions in these words: _Les Anglois qui ont une littérature
infiniment plus variée que la nôtre_. This fact is a feature in our
national pretensions that could ever have been regarded doubtfully
merely through insufficient knowledge. Dr. Johnson, indeed, made it the
distinguishing merit of the French, that they "have a book upon every
subject." But Dr. Johnson was not only capricious as regards temper
and variable humors, but as regards the inequality of his knowledge.
Incoherent and unsystematic was Dr. Johnson's information in most cases.
Hence his extravagant misappraisement of Knolles, the Turkish historian,
which is exposed so severely by Spittler, the German, who, again, is
himself miserably superficial in his analysis of English history.
Hence the feeble credulity which Dr. Johnson showed with respect to
the forgery of De Foe (under the masque of Captain Carleton) upon the
Catalonian campaign of Lord Peterborough. But it is singular that a
literature, so unrivalled as ours in its compass and variety, should not
have produced any, even the shallowest, manual of itself. And thus it
happens, for example, that writers so laborious and serviceable as Birch
are in any popular sense scarcely known. I showed to Lord Massey, among
others of his works, that which relates to Lord Worcester's (that is,
Lord Glamorgan's) negotiations with the Papal nuncio in Ireland, about
the year 1644, &c. Connected with these negotiations were many names
amongst Lord Massey's own ancestors; so that here he suddenly alighted
upon a fund of archæologic memorabilia, connecting what interested him
as an Irishman in general with what most interested him as the head of
a particular family. It is remarkable, also, as an indication of the
_general_ nobility and elevation which had accompanied the revolution
in his life, that concurrently with the constitutional torpor previously
besetting him, had melted away the intellectual torpor under which he
had found books until recently of little practical value. Lady Carbery
had herself told me that the two revolutions went on simultaneously. He
began to take an interest in literature when life itself unfolded a new
interest, under the companionship of his youthful wife. And here, by the
way, as subsequently in scores of other instances, I saw broad evidences
of the credulity with which we have adopted into our grave political
faith the rash and malicious sketches of our novelists. With Fielding
commenced the practice of systematically traducing our order of country
gentlemen. His picture of Squire Western is not only a malicious, but
also an incongruous libel. The squire's ordinary language is impossible,
being alternately bookish and absurdly rustic. In reality, the
conventional dialect ascribed to the rustic order in general--to
peasants even more than to gentlemen--in our English plays and novels,
is a childish and fantastic babble, belonging to no form of real
breathing life; nowhere intelligible; not in _any_ province; whilst, at
the same time, all provinces--Somersetshire, Devonshire, Hampshire--are
confounded with our midland counties; and positively the diction of
Parricombe and Charricombe from Exmoor Forest is mixed up with the
pure Icelandic forms of the English lakes, of North Yorkshire, and of
Northumberland. In Scotland, it needs but a slight intercourse with the
peasantry to distinguish various dialects--the Aberdonian and Fifeshire,
for instance, how easily distinguished, even by an English alien, from
the western dialects of Ayrshire, &c.! And I have heard it said,
by Scottish purists in this matter, that even Sir Walter Scott is
chargeable with considerable licentiousness in the management of his
colloquial Scotch. Yet, generally speaking, it bears the strongest
impress of truthfulness. But, on the other hand, how false and powerless
does this same Sir Walter become, when the necessities of his tale
oblige him at any time to come amongst the English peasantry! His
magic wand is instantaneously broken; and he moves along by a babble
of impossible forms, as fantastic as any that our London theatres have
traditionally ascribed to English rustics, to English sailors, and to
Irishmen universally. Fielding is open to the same stern criticism, as a
deliberate falsehood-monger; and from the same cause--want of energy
to face the difficulty of mastering a real living idiom. This defect in
language, however, I cite only as one feature in the complex falsehood
which disfigures Fielding's portrait of the English country gentleman.
Meantime the question arises, Did he mean his Squire Western for a
_representative_ portrait? Possibly not. He might design it expressly as
a sketch of an individual, and by no means of a class. And the fault
may be, after all, not in _him_, the writer, but in _us_, the falsely
interpreting readers. But, be that as it may, and figure to ourselves as
we may the rustic squire of a hundred to a hundred and fifty years back
(though manifestly at utter war, in the portraitures of our novelists,
with the realities handed down to us by our Parliamentary annals), on
that _arena_ we are dealing with objects of pure speculative curiosity.
Far different is the same question, when practically treated for
purposes of present legislation or philosophic inference. One hundred
years ago, such was the difficulty of social intercourse, simply from
the difficulty of locomotion (though even then this difficulty was much
lowered to the English, as beyond comparison the most equestrian of
nations), that it is possible to imagine a shade of difference as still
distinguishing the town-bred man from the rustic; though, considering
the multiplied distribution of our assize towns, our cathedral towns,
our sea-ports, and our universities, all so many recurring centres of
civility, it is not very easy to imagine such a thing in an island
no larger than ours. But can any human indulgence be extended to the
credulity which assumes the same possibility as existing for us in the
very middle of the nineteenth century? At a time when every week sees
the town banker drawn from our rural gentry; railway directors in every
quarter transferring themselves indifferently from town to country, from
country to town; lawyers, clergymen, medical men, magistrates, local
judges, &c., all shifting in and out between town and country; rural
families all intermarrying on terms of the widest freedom with town
families; all again, in the persons of their children, meeting for study
at the same schools, colleges, military academies, &c.; by what furious
forgetfulness of the realities belonging to the case, has it been
possible for writers in public journals to persist in arguing national
questions upon the assumption of a bisection in our population--a double
current, on the one side steeped to the lips in town prejudices, on the
other side traditionally sold to rustic views and doctrines? Such double
currents, like the Rhone flowing through the Lake of Geneva, and yet
refusing to intermingle, probably _did_ exist, and had an important
significance in the Low Countries of the fifteenth century, or between
the privileged cities and the unprivileged country of Germany down to
the Thirty Years' War; but, for us, they are in the last degree
fabulous distinctions, pure fairy tales; and the social economist or the
historian who builds on such phantoms as that of a rustic aristocracy
still retaining any substantial grounds of distinction from the town
aristocracies, proclaims the hollowness of any and all his doctrines
that depend upon such assumptions. Lord Carbery was a thorough
fox-hunter. The fox-hunting of the adjacent county of Leicestershire was
not then what it is now. The state of the land was radically different
for the foot of the horse, the nature and distribution of the fences
was different; so that a class of horses thoroughly different was then
required. But then, as now, it offered the finest exhibition of the
fox-chase that is known in Europe; and then, as now, this is the best
adapted among all known varieties of hunting to the exhibition
of adventurous and skilful riding, and generally, perhaps, to the
development of manly and athletic qualities. Lord Carbery, during the
season, might be immoderately addicted to this mode of sporting, having
naturally a pleasurable feeling connected with his own reputation as a
skilful and fearless horseman. But, though the chases were in those days
longer than they are at present, small was the amount of time really
abstracted from that which he had disposable for general purposes;
amongst which purposes ranked foremost his literary pursuits. And,
however much he transcended the prevailing conception of his order, as
sketched by satiric and often ignorant novelists, he might be regarded,
in all that concerned the liberalization of his views, as pretty fairly
representing that order. Thus, through every _real_ experience, the
crazy notion of a rural aristocracy flowing apart from the urban
aristocracy, and standing on a different level of culture as to
intellect, of polish as to manners, and of interests as to social
objects, a notion at all times false as a fact, now at length became
with all thoughtful men monstrous as a possibility.