CHAPTER II.

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BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCXLIII. MAY, 1844. VOL. LV.

Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved

to the end of each article.

CONTENTS.

IMPRISONMENT AND TRANSPORTATION, NO. 1. THE INCREASE OF CRIME 533

RHINE AND RHINELANDERS 546

THE MONSTER-MISERY OF LITERATURE. BY A MOUSE BORN OF THE MOUNTAIN 556

MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART XI. 561

INDIAN AFFAIRS--GWALIOR 579

THE FREETHINKER 593

THE SNOW. BY DELTA 617

LOVE IN THE WILDERNESS 620

IRELAND--THE LANDLORD AND TENANT QUESTION 638

* * * * *

IMPRISONMENT AND TRANSPORTATION.

NO. 1.

THE INCREASE OF CRIME.

Among the many causes of anxiety which the present state of society in

the British empire must occasion to every thoughtful or reflecting

mind--one of the most extraordinary and alarming is, the _constant and

uninterrupted increase of crime_. The Liberals shut their eyes to this,

because it affords a sad illustration of the effect of their favourite

theories, which for a quarter of a century have been, under the

direction of his Majesty's Ministry or his Majesty's Opposition, in

almost ceaseless operation. The selfish and inconsiderate (and they form

the vast majority of men) give themselves no sort of trouble about the

matter: they care not though their neighbours are murdered or robbed,

plundered or swindled, so as they escape unscathed themselves; and

without either thinking on the subject, or suggesting one remedy for its

evils, interfere only, with stentorian lungs, to resist any project to

arrest them having the remotest tendency to terminate in an assessment.

Their principle is to take of civilisation only its fruits, and steadily

to withstand the concomitant evils; and the simple way by which they

think this is to be effected--is quietly, and without saying a word, to

reap the benefit of manufacturing industry in the doubling or tripling

of their incomes; but to roar out like madmen if the smallest per

centage is proposed to be laid on them, to arrest or mitigate the evils

which that industry brings in its train. Government meanwhile, albeit

fully aware of the danger, is not sufficiently strong to do any thing to

avert it; its own majority is paralysed by the inherent selfishness of

mankind; and nothing but some great and stunning public calamity can, it

is universally felt, awaken the country to a sense of the evils growing

out of its greatness, but threatening in the end to endanger its

existence. Thus nothing is done, or at least nothing effectual is done,

to avert the dangers: every one shuts his eyes to them, or opens them

only to take measures to avert an assessment; and meanwhile crime

advances with the steps of a giant, sweeping whole classes of society

into its vortex, and threatening to spread corruption and vice, in an

incredible manner, through the densest and most dangerous classes of the

community.

Authentic and irrefragable evidence of the magnitude of this danger

exists in the statistical tables of committals which have now, for a

very considerable time, been prepared in all parts of the British

empire. Since the year 1805, when regular tables of commitments first

began to be kept in England, commitments have increased _sixfold_: they

have swelled _from five to thirty-one thousand_. During the same period

population has advanced about sixty per cent: in other words, detected

crime has advanced FOUR TIMES AS FAST AS THE NUMBERS OF THE PEOPLE.

Unwilling as we are to load our pages with statistical tables--which,

attractive to the thinking few, are repulsive to the unthinking many--we

must yet request our readers to cast their eyes to the bottom of the

pages, where these appalling truths are demonstrated by the

parliamentary returns. In Scotland and Ireland the returns of

commitments have not been kept, until within the last twenty years, with

such accuracy as can be relied on; but they exhibit an increase still

more alarming. Ireland, as might be expected, exhibits a growth of crime

which has fully kept pace with that of England during the same period:

but Scotland exhibits a change which fairly outstrips all the others in

the race of iniquity. In 1803, Lord Advocate Hope said in Parliament,

that more crime was tried at one Quarter Sessions at Manchester than

over all Scotland in a whole year; and the proceedings of the criminal

courts to the north of the Tweed, at that period, amply demonstrated the

truth of his assertion. In the year 1805, eighty-nine criminals were

brought before the whole tribunals, supreme and inferior, in Scotland;

but in the year 1842, the committals for serious offences were nearly

four thousand--in other words, serious crime, in less than forty years,

had augmented in Scotland above THIRTY-SIX FOLD. During the same period

population has advanced about fifty per cent, viz. from 1,800,000 to

2,660,000; so that in moral, staid, and religious Scotland, serious

crime, during the last forty years, has risen TWENTY-FIVE TIMES as fast

as the number of the people.[1]

Overlooked as this prodigious change has been, as all things are which

arise gradually in this country, it has yet attracted, as well it might,

the astonishment of writers on the Continent. Nine yeas ago, M. Moreau

observed, speaking of the increase of crime in Scotland--"In the year

1805, the criminal commitments in Scotland were eighty-nine: they are

now 2864--that is, they have increased in thirty years thirty-fold. It

would appear that Scotland, in becoming a manufacturing state, has in a

great degree lost the virtue and simplicity of character by which she

was formerly distinguished."[2]

What renders this prodigious increase of crime in so short a period,

in all parts of the British Empire, in a peculiar manner extraordinary

and alarming, is, that it has taken place at the very time when

unheard-of efforts were made, in every part of the country, for the

moral and religious instruction of the people. We are very far indeed

from saying that enough has been done in this way: no one is better

aware that the vast debt, which the prosperous wealth of Britain owes in

this respect to its suffering indigence, is still in great part

undischarged, and that till it is taken up and put on a proper footing

_by the state_, it never can be completely liquidated;--still, more has

been done to discharge it during the last thirty years, than in the

whole previous centuries which have elapsed since the Reformation. The

churches of England and Scotland, during that period, have improved to

an astonishing degree in vigour and efficiency: new life, a warmer

spirit, a holier ambition, has been breathed into the Establishment; the

dissenters of all denominations have vied with them in zeal and

effort; churches and chapels have been built and opened in every

direction; and though they have by no means, in the manufacturing

districts, kept pace with the increase of population, yet they have

advanced with a rapidity hitherto unheard of in British history. The

laity of all denominations have made extraordinary efforts to promote

the cause of education. In this great and good work, persons of all

descriptions have, though from very different motives, laboured

together; but much remains to be done. We well know how many tens and

hundreds of thousands, in the manufacturing districts, are now wandering

in worse than heathen darkness in the midst of a Christian land;--we

well know what insurmountable obstacles mere voluntary zeal and exertion

meet with in the most praiseworthy efforts, from the selfish resistance

of property and the reckless dissipation of indigence. But still, no one

acquainted with the subject can deny, that during the last thirty years,

incomparably more has been done to promote education among the poor than

in the preceding three centuries. Yet this period of anxious solicitude,

awakened fear, and general effort to stem, by all the known methods, the

deluge of profligacy and depravity with which the country has been

flooded, has been characterized by an increase of crime, and a general

loosening of morals among the labouring classes, hitherto unprecedented

in the country--certainly not equaled during the same period in any

other European state, and, so far as we know, without an example in the

previous history of mankind.

Struck with astonishment at this extraordinary and painful phenomenon,

and wholly at a loss to explain it on any of the principles to which

they have been accustomed to give credit, the Liberals have generally

endeavoured to deny its existence. They say that the returns of

commitments do not afford a correct measure of the crime that really

exists in the country; that a police force is now more generally

established, and is incomparably more vigilant than heretofore; that

crimes are classified in a different way from what they formerly were;

and that though the figures do not err, yet the results to which they

point are not the real ones. There is some truth in these observations.

It is true that a police force is more extensively established, and is

more efficient than it formerly was;--it is true that crimes are now

differently classified, and enter different columns, and appear in

different returns from what they formerly did;--it is true that there

are specialties in the case;--but it is not true that those specialties

tend to make the returns of crime appear greater than the reality; on

the contrary, they all tend the other way. They show that the returns as

now constructed, and the police force as it at present exists, do not by

any means exhibit the growth of crime in its true colours; that it is in

reality _incomparably greater_ than these returns or this agency has

brought to light; and that, great as the evil appears from an

examination of the Parliamentary returns, it is in truth far more

colossal and alarming.

How is a police force established in any part of Great Britain? If we

except the metropolis, where the vast concourse from all parts of the

empire unavoidably forced upon government, fourteen years ago, the

establishment of a central police, since found to be attended with such

admirable effects, it is every where set on foot by the _voluntary act_

of the inhabitants, or a certain portion of them, in a peculiar manner

cognizant of the necessity which exists for such an addition to the

means of public defence. In boroughs, it is generally the magistrates,

elected by a suffrage little superior to household suffrage, who

introduce such a measure. In counties, it can only be proposed by the

justices of peace in England, or commissioners of supply in

Scotland--both of which bodies are thoroughly imbued with, and fairly

represent, the general voice of the community. In all cases, whether in

the metropolis or in the provinces, a police imposes _an immediate and

heavy burden on all householders_. In London L40,000 a-year is given by

government to aid in the support of the police; but the whole remainder

of the cost, amounting to four times as much, falls on the ratepayers.

In the provinces the whole cost of every police force falls on the

householders; and our readers need not be told how heavy it sometimes

is, and how universally it is every where complained of.

Now, if there is any one peculiarity more than another by which this

generation is distinguished, it is aversion to assessment. People may

differ in other respects as to the designation by which the age should

be characterized; but we believe all will agree that it is a _tax-hating

age_. What did this nation first do on being liberated from danger by

the battle of Waterloo? Throw off the income-tax. What alone induced

them to submit to it again on the modified scale of three per cent? The

disasters in Affghanistan; the perils of our Indian empire; the rocking

of Britain to its foundation. When therefore, in such a country and in

such an age, we see numerous bodies of men--popularly elected in some

cases, in all swayed by the popular voice--concurring, in a great many

places, in the taxation of themselves for the establishment of a police,

we may rely upon it that some very general and grinding sense of

necessity has been at work to produce the effect. Nothing but this could

overcome, in men really and practically invested in this particular with

the power of self-government, the universal and almost invincible

repugnance to assessments. Rely upon it, for every crime which is

brought to light, and made the subject of commitment and trial by the

institution of a police force, ten previously existed, undetected and

unpunished, before men were driven to the _flebile remedium_, the

_ultimum malum_, of taxing themselves for the establishment of a force

to repress them.

To illustrate the strength of this resistance, and the important bearing

it has upon the present question, we shall refer only to two

instances--one in England, and one in Scotland. It is well known what a

scene of confusion and disorder South Wales has for years past been. The

bloodshed at Merthyr-Tydvil, the strikes in Glamorganshire, the attack

on Newport, and the Rebecca riots, had for a series of years fixed the

attention of all parts of the empire upon this, as one of the most

inflammable and dangerous portions of the community. Nor did these

disorders appear surprising to those who were practically acquainted

with the state of the country, overrun as it is in many places by vast

iron-works, which have brought together a great and reckless population,

and inhabited in all by a discontented and ill-instructed peasantry.

Population had advanced with unexampled rapidity--having increased, from

1831 to 1841, _thirty-six and a tenth_ per cent in Monmouthshire; the

greatest increase during the same period of any county in the British

empire.[3] Here then, if anywhere, it might have been expected that a

general feeling of insecurity, the sense of an overbearing necessity,

would have overcome the general repugnance of men towards local

assessment, and led to the establishment of a police force in all the

counties of South Wales, on a scale adequate to the magnitude of the

danger with which they were threatened. Was it so? Had the counties

taken the requisite steps to avoid the calamity? Quite the reverse; the

aversion to a police assessment was so strong, that nothing whatever

had been done. Glamorganshire had only established one on a small scale,

after repeated and earnest efforts on the part of its able and

public-spirited lord-lieutenant, the Marquis of Bute; and the Rebecca

riots surprised the adjoining counties without any preparation whatever.

And even after those disgraceful disorders had continued several weeks,

and rendered South Wales the scandal of the empire, and the astonishment

of Europe; still the repugnance to assessment was such, that it was only

after a severe struggle, and by no small exertions, that it was at

length carried; and the public-spirited member for the county, who to

his infinite credit brought forward the measure, stated at the county

meeting on the subject, that he was aware he endangered his seat by so

doing!

The Scotch have shown themselves not a whit behind their southern

compatriots in repugnance to a police assessment. In Lanarkshire, as it

is well known, the iron and coal trades have made unexampled progress

during the last ten years. Its population, in consequence, has

enormously increased; having risen from 316,000 to 434,000 in ten years,

from 1831 to 1841--an increase of thirty-six per cent in that short

time--the next to Monmouthshire of the whole empire. Crime had, of

course, enormously increased. In 1835, the committals for serious

offences were 401: in 1842, they had risen to 696--being an increase of

seventy-five per cent in seven years.[4] Serious crime, therefore, so

far as detected, was doubling in ten years, while population was

doubling in thirty--in other words, detected crime was increasing _three

times as fast as the numbers of the people_. Disturbances, as a matter

of course, of a very serious nature had arisen. In 1837, the great

cotton-spinners' conspiracy, which led to the memorable trial, had kept

above twenty thousand persons in Lanarkshire, for four months, in a

state of compulsory destitution. In 1842, the colliers' strike threw a

still greater number into a state of idleness for five months, which led

to a general system of plunder, and forcible seizure of the farmers'

produce in the fields; only repressed, with infinite difficulty, by the

introduction of a large military force, aided by the yeomanry of the

county, who were on permanent duty for six weeks, and the establishment

for a few months, by subscription, of a powerful police. In October

1842, twenty policemen, who had some prisoners in charge for combination

offences, were assaulted by a furious mob of two thousand persons on the

streets of Airdrie, in the centre of the mining district of the county,

the house in which they had taken refuge set on fire, and the prisoners

by main force rescued from the hands of the law.[5] These facts were

known to the whole county, and the terror which, in consequence,

pervaded the agricultural inhabitants of the mining districts was so

great, that in a petition to government praying for protection, they

stated--that they would be better if law were altogether abolished, and

every man were allowed to defend himself by fire-arms, than they were

now; for that, if they used lethal weapons in defence of their property,

they ran the risk of being transported for culpable homicide--if they

did not, they were certain of being plundered by the combined workmen.

And what did the county do to arrest this disgraceful and perilous

system of outrage and plunder? Why, in the full knowledge of all these

facts, they passed a solemn resolution at Lanark, on 30th April 1843,

that _they never would again, on any occasion, or under any

circumstances of necessity whatever, sanction the employment of any

police or defensive force raised at their expense_.

We do not suppose that the inhabitants of South Wales or the banks of

the Clyde are particularly short-sighted or selfish, or more inclined to

resist assessment for objects of public utility or necessity than those

of other parts of the empire. On the contrary, we know that they are in

a remarkable degree the reverse; and that in no part of the world are

undertakings in public improvement or charity entered into with more

alacrity, and supported with more liberality. We suppose the Scotch and

Welsh are what other men are--neither better nor worse. We adduce these

facts, not as tending to fasten any peculiar charge on them, but as

indicating the general character of human nature, and the universal

repugnance to taxation, which, when men are really and practically, and

not in form only, invested with the power of self-government, appears

the moment that any proposition of subjecting them to assessment for the

purpose of local defence and protection, even under the most aggravating

circumstances, is brought forward. How great, then, must have been the

mass of experienced, but undetected and unpunished, crime which pervades

the state, when this all but invincible repugnance has been generally

overcome, and men in so many cities and counties have been induced to

submit to the certainty of the visit of the tax-gatherer, rather than

the chance of a visit from the thief or the burglar!

And for decisive evidence that the new establishment of a police force

is not, by the crimes which it is the means of binging to light, the

cause of the prodigious increase of crime of late years in the British

empire, we refer to the contemporary examples of two other countries, in

which a police force on a far more extensive scale has been established,

and has been found the means of effecting a signal _diminution_ of crime

and commitment. In Hindostan, as is well known, a most extensive and

admirably organized system of police has been found absolutely

indispensable to repress the endless robberies of which its fertile

plains had long been the theatre; and the force employed, permanently or

occasionally, in this way amounts to _a hundred and sixty thousand_! The

consequence has been a _diminution_ of crime and commitments, during the

last forty years, fully as remarkable as this simultaneous increase in

the British islands. The official reports which have been compiled in

India by the British authorities, exhibit of late years the pleasing

prospect of a decrease of serious crime to a third or fourth part of its

former amount.[6]

Look at France during the same period. That there is in that great

country a numerous and well-organized police force, will not probably be

denied by those who know any thing, either of its present circumstances

by observation, or its past from history. Unlike Great Britain, it is

universally established and raised, not by separate acts of Parliament,

local effort, and contribution, but by a _general_ assessment, under the

name of "Centimes Additionels," yet varying in particular districts,

according to the necessity and amount of the defensive force, but, in

all, imposed by the authority and levied by the officers of government.

And what has been the result? Is it that crime, from being generally

brought to light, evinces the same steady and alarming increase which is

conspicuous in all parts of the British islands? Quite the reverse:

criminal law and a powerful system of police appear there in their true

light, as checking and deterring from crime. Population is advancing

steadily though slowly in that country, crime is stationary or

declining;[7] and while the most powerful and efficient police in Europe

only bring to light about 7000 serious criminals annually out of

34,000,000 souls--that is, 1 in 6700--in Great Britain, out of a

population, including England and Scotland, of 18,000,000 in round

numbers, there were in 1842 no less than 34,800 persons charged with

serious crimes before the criminal tribunals, or 1 in 514--in other

words, serious crime is _fourteen times_ as prevalent in Great Britain

as it is in France. Nothing can more clearly demonstrate the deplorable

fallacy of those who ascribe the present extraordinary frequency and

uninterrupted growth of crime in this country, as attested by the

criminal returns, to the vigilance of the police in bringing it to

light.

In truth, so far from its being the case that crime is now better looked

after, and therefore more frequently brought to light than formerly, and

that it is that which swells our criminal returns, the fact is directly

the reverse. So weak, feeble, and disjointed, are the efforts of our

various multiform and unconnected police establishments over the country

generally,[8] that we assert, without the fear of contradiction by any

person practically acquainted with the subject, that the amount of

undetected and unpunished crime is rapidly on the increase, and is now

greater than it was in any former period. We would recommend any person

who doubts this statement, to go to any of the criminal establishments

in the country, and compare the list of informations of serious crimes

lodged with those of offenders committed; he will find the latter are

scarcely ever so much as a third of the former. These facts do not

appear in the criminal returns, because they are not called for; and the

police-officers are in no hurry to publish facts which proclaim the

insufficiency of the means of repressing crime at their disposal. But

occasionally, and under the pressure of immediate danger, or a strong

sense of duty on the part of the public functionaries, they do come out.

For example, it was stated by Mr Millar, the head of the Glasgow police,

(a most able and active officer,) in a letter read at the county meeting

of Lanarkshire on 21st January 1843, on the subject of a police for the

rural district of that and the adjoining counties, that in the three

months immediately preceding that date, _ninety-one_ cases of theft,

chiefly by housebreaking, had been reported at the Glasgow

police-office, committed in the neighbourhood of Glasgow, but beyond the

police bounds; and that from his own information, and that of the other

officers of his establishment, this number, great as it was, was not _a

third_ of the crimes of that description which had actually been

committed during that period. On the other hand, it was stated by the

sheriff of the county at the same meeting, that in only fourteen of

these ninety-one cases had any trace whatever been got of the

delinquents. In other words, the number of instances in which any clue

was obtained to the criminals was only fourteen out of 273, or _one in

twenty nearly_. And yet this miserable driblet of one in twenty,

exhibits in the criminal returns for Lanarkshire an increase of 75 _per

cent_ in seven years, or a duplication in ten. This instance, to which

hundreds of others might be added from all parts of the country, shows

how extreme is the illusion of those who lay the flattering unction to

their souls, that serious crime is not now more prevalent than it was

formerly, but only better brought to light.

In truth, it has long been known, that in consequence of the relaxation

of the severity of our criminal code, and the astonishing increase of

serious crimes which cannot be passed over, a vast number of criminals

are now disposed of in the police courts, and never appear in the

criminal returns at all, who, twenty years ago, were deemed felons of

the very highest class, and visited often with death, always with

transportation. It was stated in parliament as a subject of complaint

against the Lancashire magistrates, that during the insurrection of 1842

in that county, nearly ten thousand persons were imprisoned, and let go

after a short confinement, without ever being brought to trial. During

the disturbances in the same year, in Lanarkshire and many other

counties of Scotland, (especially Ayrshire, Fife, and Mid-Lothian,) the

accumulation of prisoners was so great, that not only were none detained

for trial but those against whom the evidence was altogether conclusive;

but that great numbers were remitted for trial before the summary

tribunals, and escaped with a month or two of imprisonment, who had

committed capital crimes, and a few years before would infallibly have

been transported for fourteen years. We are getting on so fast, that

nothing is more common now than to see hardened criminals, both in

England and Scotland, disposed of by the police magistrates, and for

capital crimes receive a few months imprisonment. Their names and crimes

never appear in the returns at all. There is no fault attached to any

one for this seeming laxity. The thing is unavoidable. If the class of

cases were all sent to the higher tribunals which formerly were

considered privative to them, the judges, were they twice as numerous as

they are, would sit in the criminal courts from one year's end to

another, and the jails would still be choked up with untried criminals,

numbers of whom would linger for years in confinement.

The Liberal party, in the beginning of the present century, were

unanimous in imputing the vast increase of crime to the defects of our

criminal law. The nominal severity of that system, it was said, and said

justly, with its uncertain punishments and frequent opportunities of

escape, afforded in fact a bounty on the commission of crime. Injured

parties declined to give information for fear of being bound over to

prosecute; witnesses were reluctant to give evidence, judges caught at

legal quibbles, juries violated their oaths, in order to save the

accused from a punishment which all felt was disproportioned to the

offence; and thus the great object of criminal jurisprudence, certainty

of punishment, was entirely defeated. There was much truth in these

observations, but much fallacy in the hope that their removal would

effect any reduction in the number of offences. The object sought for

was carried. Humane principles were triumphant. The labours of Sir

Samuel Romilly and Sir James Mackintosh, aided by the cautious wisdom

and experienced ability of Sir R. Peel, produced a total revolution in

our criminal jurisprudence. The old stain has been removed: we need no

longer fear a comparison With the laws of Draco. For the last fifteen

years so many offences, formerly capital, have had that dreadful penalty

removed, that the law in Great Britain, as now practically administered,

is probably the mildest in Europe. Death is scarce ever inflicted except

for murder; in cases of housebreaking, even when attended with personal

violence, it is never thought of. The executions in Great Britain now

range from twenty-five to thirty-five only a-year, instead of a hundred

and fifty or two hundred, which they formerly were. And what has been

the result? Has the promised and expected diminution of crime taken

place, in consequence of the increased certainty of punishment, and the

almost total removal of all reasonable or conscientious scruples at

being concerned in a prosecution? Quite the reverse. The whole

prophecies and anticipations of the Liberal school have been falsified

by the result. Crime, so far from declining, has signally increased; and

its progress has never been so rapid as during the last fifteen years,

when the lenity of its administration has been at its maximum. An

inspection of the returns of serious crimes already given, will

completely demonstrate this.

Next, it was said, that education would lay the axe to the root of

crime; that ignorance was the parent of vice; and, by diffusing the

school-master, you would extinguish the greater part of the wickedness

which afflicted society; that the providing of cheap, innocent, and

elevating amusements for the leisure hours of the working-classes, would

prove the best antidote to their degrading propensities; and that then,

and then only, would crime really be arrested, when the lamp of

knowledge burned in every mechanic's workshop, in every peasant's

cottage. The idea was plausible, it was seducing, it was amiable; and

held forth the prospect of general improvement of morals from the

enlarged culture of mind. The present generation is generally, it may

almost be said universally, imbued with these opinions; and the efforts

accordingly made for the instruction of the working-classes during the

last twenty-five years, have been unprecedented in any former period of

our history. What have been the results? Has crime declined in

proportion to the spread of education? Are the best instructed classes

the least vicious? Has eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge

diminished the power of the Tempter? So far from it, the consequences,

hitherto at least, have been melancholy and foreboding in the extreme.

The criminal returns of Great Britain and Ireland for the last twenty

years, demonstrate that the uneducated criminals are about a third of

the whole: in other words, the educated criminals are to the uneducated

as two to one.[9] In Scotland, the educated criminals, are about _four

times_ the uneducated; in England, just double; in Ireland, they are

nearly equal. Nay, what is still more remarkable, while the number of

uneducated criminals, especially in Scotland, is yearly diminishing,

that of educated ones is yearly increasing.[10] In France, the criminal

returns have for long demonstrated that the amount of crime, in all the

eighty-four departments of the monarchy, is just in proportion to the

number of educated persons which each contains; a fact the more

remarkable, as three-fifths of the whole inhabitants of the country have

received no education whatever.[11] Of the criminals actually brought

before the Courts of Assize, which correspond to our Old Bailey and

Circuit Courts, it appears that about four-sevenths are educated, and

three-sevenths destitute of any instruction; which gives a greater

proportion of criminals to the educated than the uneducated class, as

three-fifths of the people are wholly uninstructed.[12] But what is most

marvellous of all, the criminal returns of Prussia, the most universally

educated country in Europe, where the duty of teaching the young is

enforced by law upon parents of every description, and entire ignorance

is wholly unknown, the proportion of criminals to the entire population

is TWELVE TIMES greater than in France, where education of any sort has

only been imparted to _two-fifths_ of the community.[13] These facts are

startling--they run adverse to many preconceived ideas--they overturn

many favourite theories; but they are not the less facts, and it is by

facts alone that correct conclusions are to be drawn in regard to human

affairs. In America too, it appears from the criminal returns, many of

which, in particular towns and states, are quoted in Buckingham's

_Travels_, that the educated criminals are to the uneducated often as

three, generally as two, to one. These facts completely settle the

question; although, probably, the whole present generation must descend

to their graves before the truth on the subject is generally

acknowledged.

But to any one who reflects on the principles of human nature, and the

moving powers by which it is impelled, whether towards virtue or vice,

such a result must appear not only intelligible but unavoidable. It is

our desires which are our tempters. All the statistical returns prove

that the great majority of educated persons, generally at least

three-fourths of the whole, have received an _imperfect_ education. They

have just got knowledge enough to incur its dangers; they have not got

enough either to experience its utility or share in its elevation. Their

desires are inflamed, their imaginations excited, their cravings

multiplied by what they read; but neither their understandings

strengthened, their habits improved, nor their hearts purified. The

great bulk of mankind at all times, and especially in all manufacturing

communities, can only receive an imperfect education. It is not in the

age of twelve hours' labour at factories, and of the employment of

children without restraint in coal and iron mines, that any thing

approaching to a thorough education can be imparted to the working

classes, at least in the manufacturing districts. The conclusion to be

drawn from this is, not that education is hopeless and should be

abandoned, in relation to the great bulk of men--for we every day, in

detached instances, have proof of its immense and blessed influence; the

conclusion is, that it is by the active, not the intellectual powers,

the desires, not the understanding, that the great majority of men are

governed; that it is the vast addition civilisation and commerce make to

the wants and passions of men, which constitutes the real cause of its

demoralizing influence; and that these dangers never will be obviated

till means are discovered of combating sin with its own weapons, and by

desires as extensively felt as its passions. We must fight it, not only

with the armour of reason, but the fire of imagination. It is by

_enlisting the desires on the side of virtue and order_, that we can

alone generally influence mankind.

It is astonishing how many ways men will turn before they can be brought

to admit the simple truth unfolded in the book of Jeremiah and enforced

in every page of the gospel, that the heart is "deceitful above all

things, and desperately wicked." Driven from the chimeras of mild

punishment and general education as antidotes against the antagonist

power of sin, philanthropists have at last taken refuge in the

infallible effects of _solitary confinement_. Punishment, it was said,

is the real demoralizer of society; it is our jails which are the

hotbeds and nurseries of crime. Reform them--separate the hardened

criminal from the apprentice to crime--let solitary confinement teach

its impressive lessons, and confer its regular habits; and vice, with

all its concomitant evils, will disappear from the land. At the same

time a great impression was made on the legislature by a graphic, and,

in some respects, just description of the suffering in the penal

colonies of New South Wales; and the result has been a general adoption,

over the whole empire, of the system of long imprisonment instead of

transportation, to an extent previously unknown since the system of

forced convict-labour in the colonies was introduced. All persons

practically acquainted with the subject were aware of the result in

which their experiment would terminate, and the fearful multiplication

of irreclaimable criminals to which it would lead in the heart of the

empire. But unfortunately the persons practically acquainted with the

subject had scarcely a voice in the legislature--the current ran strong

in favour of lengthened imprisonment, and the abolition, except in very

bad cases, of transportation. The judges gave ample scope to the new

system, and it received in every point of view a fair experiment.

Highway robbers, housebreakers, and habitual thieves, received, in great

numbers of cases, sentences of imprisonment, instead of transportation

for life or fourteen years. The jails at the same time were every where

improved; a general system of prison discipline was adopted and

enforced; and solitary confinement, with hard labour, became almost

universal. And what has been the result? Why, that it has been now

demonstrated by experience, that even the longest imprisonments, and the

best system of prison discipline, have no effect, or scarce any, in

reclaiming offenders; and that the only effect of the new system has

been, to crowd the jails with convicts and the streets with thieves; to

load the counties with assessments and the calendars with prisoners; to

starve New South Wales for want of compulsory labour, and oppress Great

Britain by the redundance of hardened idleness. We speak of a matter the

subject of universal notoriety: ample proof of it will be furnished in a

future Number.

But, what is most alarming of all, it has now been completely

demonstrated, that we are not to look even to the general spread of

religious instruction for any immediate or even rapid diminution of

crime, or amelioration of the habits of the labouring classes. We say

_immediate or rapid_, because none can be more sensible than we are,

that it is thus alone that crime in the end is to be arrested, and that

the efforts now making in this respect in all parts of the British

empire, are laying the only foundation whereon in future times the

superstructure of a moral and orderly society are to be laid. But, as

every system must be tested by its fruits, and these fruits in the

present forced and artificial state of society are so rapidly brought

forth--it is worse than useless to go on encouraging expectations of an

_early_ reformation of society from the extension of church

establishments, the zeal of dissenters, or the efforts of clerical

instructors. Depend upon it, half a century must elapse before these

praiseworthy and philanthropic efforts produce any _general_ effect on

the frame of society. We shall be fortunate indeed, if in a whole

century the existing evils are in any material degree lessened, and

society has gone on so long without one of those terrible convulsions,

like the French Revolution, which at once destroy the prospects of the

present generation and the hopes of the next.

The reason is, that degraded and sensual men have an instinctive

aversion to religious truth, and a still greater distaste for religious

restraint. The carnal man is at war with God. When will this great

truth, so loudly proclaimed in every page of the gospel, be practically

acknowledged and acted upon? To those who are acquainted with the

anatomy of crime, and who see exemplified in real life the courses of

the wicked, its truth becomes not only evident, but of overwhelming

importance. The strength of the world consists in its pleasures and

enjoyments. It is the vehemence of the desire for these pleasures and

enjoyments, which constitutes the fearful force of its temptations. The

whole progress of society, the whole efforts of man, the whole

accumulations of wealth are directed, in its later stages, to augment

these desires. Necessities in a large portion of society being provided

for, pleasures only are thought of. Civilisation increases them, for it

augments enjoyment: commerce, for it multiplies the wealth by which it

is purchased: ingenuity, for it adds to the instruments of luxury:

knowledge, for it spreads an ardent, and often exaggerated picture of

its gratifications. The whole efforts of man in civilized life are

directed to the increase of human enjoyment, the incitement of human

desire. Need we wonder, then, if religion, which prescribes an

_abstinence_ from the pleasures of sin, which enjoins continence to the

sensual, sobriety to the drunkard, reflection to the unheeding,

gentleness to the irascible, restraint to the voluptuous, probity to the

avaricious, punishment to the profligate, meets in such an age with very

few votaries? Some, doubtless, will always be found, who, disgusted with

the profligacy with which they are surrounded, are led only the more

rapidly to a life of rectitude and duty by such vice; but how many are

they amidst the crowd of sensual and unreflecting? Perhaps one in

twenty. The great mass pass quietly by on the other side; they do not

say there is no God, but they live altogether without God in the world.

In vain are efforts made to reclaim the vicious, to bring up their

children in the way they should go, in the hope that when they are old

they will not desert it. The grown-up will not go to church; in

manufacturing towns they will not even put on Sunday's clothes, but

revel in intoxication or sloth in their working-dresses all the Lord's

day; except when softened by misfortune, or roused by calamity, they

will not listen, even at home, to the voice of religious counsel.

Children may learn their catechism, and repeat their responses at

school; but when they become men and women, will they resist the

temptations by which they are surrounded? Numerous congregations are

often suddenly formed by the planting of an eloquent and earnest divine

into a densely peopled and neglected locality; but where does the

congregation in general come from? Go into the thinned or deserted

churches or chapels in its vicinity, and you will find you have only

_transferred_ the serious and Christian community from one place of

worship to another.

Nor let it be said that these dangers affect only a limited portion of

the community, and that, provided only society holds together, and

property is upon the whole secure, it is of little consequence to the

great bulk of the nation whether its criminals are doubling or tripling

every ten years, whether its convicts are hanged, imprisoned, or

transported. Doubtless that is the view taken by the majority of men,

and which ever makes them resist so strenuously any measures calculated

to arrest the general evils by a forced contribution from all classes of

the state. But is such a view of so very serious a matter either

justified by reason, or warranted by a durable regard to self-interest?

Considered in reference only to immediate advantage, and with a view to

avert the much-dreaded evil of an assessment, is it expedient to allow

crime to go on increasing at the fearful rate which it has done in this

country during the last forty years? Can we regard without disquietude

the appalling facts demonstrated by the Parliamentary returns of

population and commitments--that the people are augmenting three times

as fast in the manufacturing as the agricultural districts--that

detected and punished crime is multiplying in the former three times as

fast as the people--and crime really committed three times as much as

that which is brought to light? What can be expected from a state in

which crime, in the manufacturing districts, is thus increasing

TWENTY-SEVEN TIMES _as fast as mankind in the rural_? From what sources

does this overflowing stream of recklessness, profligacy, and misery,

which overflows our workhouses and fills our jails, mainly spring, but

from this prodigious and unrestrained increase of crime and depravity

among the working classes in the manufacturing districts? Must not such

a state of things lead to a constant augmentation of poor-rates, county

rates, and jail assessments? And how short-sighted is the policy which

allows these oppressive burdens to go on constantly increasing, merely

from terror of incurring additional expense in striving to arrest them,

and hopes to avoid danger, like the partridge, by putting its head in

the bush, and ceasing to look it in the face?

But most of all, in a public and political view, is this extraordinary

increase of crime in our manufacturing districts, a subject of serious

and anxious consideration to all classes in the state. It is in vain to

seek to conceal, it is folly to attempt to deny, that in the dense

masses of the manufacturers the real danger of Great Britain is to be

found. Though not amounting, upon the whole, to more than a tenth part

of the nation, they are incomparably the most alarming from their close

proximity to each other, the fierce passions which the revolutionary

press has long nourished among them, and the perfect organization which,

under the direction Of the leaders of their trades' unions, they have

long attained. The insurrection in the manufacturing districts of

England, and violent strikes in Scotland in 1842, may warn us of the

danger of such an outbreak, especially when combined, as the next will

almost certainly be, with a general rebellion of the Irish Repealers.

Infinite local mischief, incredible destruction of life and property,

would inevitably follow any serious and general insurrection among them;

even though crushed, as in the end it certainly would be, by an united

effort of the other classes in the state. But is the shock to credit,

the destruction of capital, the breaking of the bread of hundreds of

thousands, nothing in a national point of view? And what can augment the

dangers of such local insurrections so much as the acknowledged fact,

that crime is making unprecedented progress amongst them; that so

general have the causes of dissoluteness become, that whole masses are

brought up in depraved and reckless habits, on the verge of, if not

actually committing crime; and that "_les classes dangereuses_" are

daily receiving additional accessions on the depraved, the dissolute,

and abandoned from all the other ranks in the state.

Let us therefore no longer deceive ourselves, or attempt to deceive

others. Crime is making extraordinary and unprecedented progress amongst

us; it is advancing with a rapidity unparalleled in any other European

state: if not arrested, it will come to render the country unbearable;

and will terminate in multiplying to such an extent "_les classes

dangereuses_," as they have been well denominated by the French, as, on

the first serious political convulsion, may come to endanger the state.

It has advanced with undeviating and fearful rapidity through all the

successive delusions which have been trusted to in the country to check

its progress. With equal ease it has cast aside the visions of Sir

Samuel Romilly and the advocates of lenient punishment--the dreams of

Lord Brougham and the supporters of general education--the theories of

the Archbishop of Dublin and the enemies of transportation--the hopes of

Lord John Russell and the partizans of improved prison discipline at

home. Even the blessed arm of the gospel has hitherto failed in checking

its advance amongst us; and it nowhere appears in more appalling colours

than in the districts where the greatest and most strenuous efforts have

been made for the moral and religious instruction of the people. "Nous

avons donnes a penser," as the French say. Ample subject for serious

reflection has been furnished to our readers till a future occasion,

when the cause of this general failure, and the means requisite for the

diminution of crime, will be considered.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Table showing the progress of crime in the British islands since

1805, in so far as can be ascertained.

Years. England. Scotland. Ireland.

1805 4605 89 3600

1806 4346 101 3781

1807 4446 97 3522

1808 4735 124 3704

1809 5330 Chasm. 3641

1810 5146 3799

1811 5337 4162

1812 6576 4286

1813 7164 Chasm.

1814 6390

1815 7818

1816 9091

1817 13,932

1818 13,567

1819 14,254

1820 13,710 1486

1821 13,115 1522

1822 12,241 1691 13,251

1823 12,263 1733 14,632

1824 13,698 1802 15,258

1825 14,437 1876 15,515

1826 16,164 1999 16,318

1827 17,924 2116 18,031

1828 16,564 2024 14,683

1829 18,675 2063 15,271

1830 18,107 2329 15,794

1831 19,647 2451 16,192

1832 20,829 2431 16,056

1833 20,072 2564 17,819

1834 22,451 2691 24,381

1835 20,731 2867 21,205

1836 20,984 3922 23,891

1837 23,612 3126 24,804

1838 23,094 3418 25,723

1839 24,443 3409 26,392

1840 27,187 3872 23,833

1841 27,760 3562 20,796

1842 31,309 3884

--PORTER's _Progress of the Nation_, iii. 172, 227.

[2] MOREAU, _Stat. de la Grande Bretagne_, vol. ii. p. 317.

[3] Census of 1841.

[4] PORTER'S _Parliamentary Tables_.

[5] These facts were all proved in the subsequent trial of the leaders

of the riot, at Edinburgh.

[6] Table showing the diminution of crime in British India:--

CIRCUIT COURT OF BENGAL.

Burglary. Cattle-stealing. Fraud. Larceny. Total.

1816 to 1818 2853 203 150 1516 3722

1825 to 1827 1036 31 49 223 1339

LOWER AND WESTERN PROVINCES OF BENGAL.

LOWER WESTERN

Sentenced. Gang Robberies. Murder.

1816 13,869 1807 1481 406

1827 8075 1824 234 30

--MARTIN'S _British Colonies_. 12mo, Edin. IX. 322, 329

[7] Table showing the persons accused at the Assize Courts of France in

the under mentioned years:--

1828--6922 1832--7565 1836--6289 1840--6117

1829--7359 1833--6694 1837--7164 1841--

1830--6962 1834--6952 1838--6872 1842--

1831--7604 1835--6371 1839--6271

--PORTER'S _Parl. Tables_, vi. 346.

[8] We except the police of London, which is admirable, and also that of

Liverpool, Glasgow, Manchester, and Edinburgh; where, though there is

great room for improvement, much has been done in this way to repress

crime.

[9] Table showing the instruction of criminals over the British Empire

in 1841.

Neither read Total.

nor write. Imperfectly. Well. Superior. Educated. Uneducated.

England 9220 13,732 2,253 126 18,171 9,220

Scotland 696 2,248 554 42 2,834 696

Ireland 7152 3,084 5,631 0 8,733 7,152

------ ------- ------ ----- ------- -------

17,068 19,064 8,438 168 29,738 17,068

--PORTER'S _Progress of the Nation_, iii. 201, 214, 215, 232.

[10] Table showing the centesimal proportion of crime in relation to

education in the under-mentioned years.

Unable

to read Not

or write. Imperfectly. Well. Superior. ascertained. Total.

1836 33.52 52.53 10.36 0.91 2.68 100

1837 35.85 52.08 9.45 0.43 2.18 100

1838 34.42 53.41 9.77 0.34 2.08 100

1839 33.53 53.48 10.07 0.32 2.60 100

1840 33.32 55.57 8.29 0.37 2.45 100

1841 33.21 56.67 7.10 0.43 2.27 100

1842 32.33 58.52 6.77 0.22 2.34 100

--_Parl. Papers_, 5th May 1843. M'CULLOCH, _Stat. of Great Britain_, i.

476-7.

[11] See GUERRY'S _Stat. Tables of France_.

[12] Uneducated. Imperfectly educated. Good do. Superior do. Total educated.

1828 4,116 1,858 780 118 2,756

1831 4,600 2,047 767 190 3,004

1834 4,080 2,061 608 203 2,872

--PORTER'S _Parl. Tables_, ii. 346.

[13] In France and Prussia there were in 1826.--

Prussia. France.

Crimes against the person 1 in 34.122 1 in 32.411

Do. property 1 in 597 1 in 9.392

Do. on the whole 1 in 587 1 in 7.285

RHINE AND RHINELANDERS

"On the Rhine, I am never more than twenty years old!" says the Countess

Ida Hahn Hahn, in her _Erinnerungen_. "There only do I feel myself

quite at home. Whether arriving from the Baltic or the Guadalquivir, I

have always a recurrence of the same nameless home-feeling, which

renders me at once happy and tranquil. O, the Rhine! the Rhine! What are

other rivers--your Seine, and Garonne, and Tagus--compared with him? But

small and secondary streams beside the mighty Rhine. There are certain

rivers which represent nations, and ideas, and periods of history--the

Scamander for instance, bringing to our thoughts the days of Grecian

heroism; when men fought with gods, and in so doing seemed to wrest from

them a portion of their supernatural strength and beauty--the Nile, the

priestly Nile, mysterious as a dogma, but rich in blessings as the

agency of a divine spirit; concealed in its source, but manifest in its

operation--then the Jordan, the stream of revelation, on whose banks is

heard the rushing of the wings of the dove, while a voice, other than

that of man, murmurs over the waters--and the Tiber, a small and muddy

stream, but the gigantic and sparkling reflex of Rome's immortal

turrets. But the Rhine, that heroic river, which nations never cross

without buckling on their armour for the fight; and yet, on whose banks

life is so free, so safe, and so delightful. Hark to the clatter of

wine-cups, the echoes of music, the whispered legends, and the clash of

weapons! while the old river flows on so cheerily, murmuring as he goes

words of encouragement to his children.

"I embrace thee, O Rhine! and wherever I go I will not cease to love

thee.

* * * * *

"When I pass in review all the beautiful scenes I have visited, and

then ask myself the question, Where I would fain see the sun set for

the last time? the answer is unhesitating and heartfelt, and

invariably the same--'Behind Stobzenfels, on the Rhine.'"

It would be difficult better to illustrate German veneration and

affection for the Rhine, than by the above passages from one of the most

intellectual female writers of the day--a writer whose works will bear

comparison with those of George Sand for genius and masculine vigour of

style, (exempt, however, from much that is objectionable in the

French-woman;) while for elegance, taste, and a fine feeling for art and

poetry, they may be placed on the same line with those of our own

"Ennuyee." What the Countess Hahn Hahn feels and expresses with all the

fervour of a poetical imagination--the sort of exhilarating and exulting

love for the most classical stream of modern story--is felt in a greater

or less degree by all intellectual classes of Germans. Their veneration

for the old river that waters one of the sunniest and fairest districts

of the Vaterland, is profound; their admiration of the natural beauties,

and of the vestiges of days gone by, that abound upon its banks,

unceasing. German patriotism is comprehensive: it hails as one country

all the wide lands in which the Teuton tongue is spoken; and in nearly

all those lands is the Rhine thought and talked of with an admiration

amounting to enthusiasm. By a contradiction, however, of not unfrequent

occurrence, the people who seem least capable of sharing this feeling,

are those who ought to be most under its influence--the inhabitants of

the Rhine-country itself. The well known and often quoted passage of

Jean Jacques, applied by him to the dwellers on the shores of Lake

Leman, is equally applicable to the denizens of the Rhineland. "Je

dirois volontiers a ceux qui ont du gout et sont sensibles--allez a

Vevey, visitez le pays, examinez les sites, promenez vous sur le lac; et

dites si la nature n'a pas fait ce beau pays pour une Julie, pour une

Claire, et pour un St Preux; mais---- ne les y cherchez pas." In like

manner we would say--Visit the Rhine, not as most tourists do, by

rushing in a steam-boat from Rotterdam or Cologne to Basle or Baden, but

deliberately, on shore as well as on the water, climbing the mountains

and strolling through the valleys, seeking out the innumerable and

enchanting points of view, and contemplating them by sunset and sunrise,

in the broad glare of noon and by the subdued evening light; and then

say whether such a country is not worthy of different inhabitants from

the mongrel race, part German, part Flemish, part French, which it now

possesses--a population which, when it has consumed its five or six

heavy meals, smoked a dozen or two pipes, and slept its long sleep of

repletion, considers it has done its duty to God and man, and troubles

itself little with such intangible matters as poetical reveries or

mental cultivation.

But we are running away from our subject, and losing sight of the

intention we had in commencing this paper, which was, to hook ourselves

on to the dexter arm of that indefatigable rambler, M. Alexander Dumas,

and accompany him in an excursion up the Rhine. He thinks proper to

proceed thither by way of Belgium, and we must conform to his

arrangements. In due time we shall return to our Rhenish friends.

M. Dumas's earliest care, on arriving at Brussels, was to deliver to

King Leopold a letter of recommendation with which he had provided

himself for that monarch; and he hastened to the palace, where he

obtained admission, he tells us, more easily than he could have done at

Paris at the house of a second-rate banker. We were not aware that the

French _bureaucratie_ of the day were of such difficult access, and

would strongly advise them, since it is so, to take pattern by his

Belgian majesty; who in this instance, however, was not at Brussels at

all, but at his country palace of Lacken, whither M. Dumas proceeds.

Here he is immediately ushered into the king's presence.

"After a quarter of an hour's conversation," says our traveller, "which

his Majesty was pleased to put at once upon a footing of familiar chat,

I became convinced that I was speaking with the most philosophical king

who had ever existed, not excepting Frederick the Great."

We congratulate M. Dumas sincerely upon the exquisite keenness of

perception which enabled him to make this discovery, and from so decided

an opinion in the course of a quarter of an hour's familiar chat. At the

same time we cannot repress a fear, that he is apt to be a little

dazzled by the sparkling halo that surrounds a diadem. This we do not

say so much with reference to the King of the Belgians, who may be a

very philosophical, as he has proved himself to be a very judicious

sovereign; but it has struck us more than once, during the perusal of M.

Dumas's wanderings in various lands, that he exhibits a slight, an

inconceivably small, tendency to tuft-hunting, hardly consistent with

his ultra-liberal principles, and difficult to reconcile with the

cynical tone that he habitually adopts in speaking of most existing

governments and institutions. To say the truth, we have conceived a

great affection for our friend Alexander, and feel every disposition to

glide lightly over his faults and exalt his virtues; to treat him

tenderly, in short, even as one we love. We do not expect perfection

from him, although we are anxious to believe that he approaches as near

to that angelic state as it is given to a child of clay to do. We would

pardon his recording in some detail the gracious words spoken to him by

the King of this, and the Prince of that--showing how he was treated on

a footing of perfect equality and familiarity by the mighty ones of the

earth--how they caressed and complimented him, and wore out the boots of

their aides-de-camp and chamberlains by sending after him--and how they

told him to "Venez me demander a diner," or in other words, to go and

take a chop with them whenever he could make it convenient. At all these

interesting and carefully recorded incidents we should indulgently

smile, were they narrated by any one but our much-esteemed

Alexander--the confirmed democrat, the political Utopian, the declared

disciple of the subversive school, the worthy representative, when he

gets upon the chapter of politics, of that recently discovered

zoological curiosity, the _tigre-singe_. It is the inconsistency of the

thing that strikes and afflicts us.

Of M. Dumas's very ultra views on political subjects, we have abundant

proof in the section headed "Waterloo," which is an amusing specimen of

the rabid style. The tone is pretty much the same as that of the most

violent of the French democratic and anti-English journals. We should

like to extract it all, but it is too lengthy, and we must content

ourselves with the last ten lines. Here they are, breathing saltpetre

and bayonets:--

"A quarter of a century has elapsed since that date, (June 1815,)

and France is only now beginning to understand that the defeat of

Waterloo was necessary for the liberty of Europe; but she not the

less cherishes at the bottom of her heart a poignant grief and rage

at having been marked out for a victim. On that plain where so many

Spartan-like warriors fell for her sake--where the pyramid of the

Prince of Orange, the tomb of Colonel Gordon, and the monument of

the Hanoverians, serve as mementoes of the fight--no stone, or

cross, or inscription recalls the name of France. But the day shall

come when God will bid her (France) recommence the work of universal

liberation--the work begun by Bonaparte and interrupted by Napoleon;

then, when that work is done, we will turn the lion of Nassau with

its head towards Europe, _et tout sera dit_."

As this rather high-flown passage might not be generally intelligible to

our readers, we will put it into plain English. It will then run thus:--

"When France shall again become a republic, or when she shall find a

king mad or wicked enough to give in to her worst propensities, she

will pour her legions across every frontier, sweep all opposition

before her, revolutionize and emancipate Europe, and hoist the

triumphant and blood-stained tricolor over the ashes of

sovereignties, and the ruins of every old and time-honoured

institution."

It is strange to see a man of undoubted talent, and who ought to be

amongst the enlightened ones of his country and his age, indulging in

such absurd visions and insane prophecies. Rhapsodies of this kind would

be merely laughable, were it not for the weight which they

unquestionably have with the younger and less reflecting classes of

Frenchmen, especially when proceeding from a writer of M. Dumas's

abilities and reputation. It is by this style of writing, which abounds

in French periodical literature, and in the works of some, fortunately a

minority, of the clever _litterateurs_ of the day, that the attacks of

war fever, to which France is subject, are aggravated, if not frequently

brought on.

We do not intend following M. Dumas step by step through Belgium, to

which country he devotes a volume. We prefer passing at once to the

Rhine, which he ascends from Cologne to Strasburg, making continual

pauses, and enlivening the description of what he sees by agreeable and

spirited versions of what he has read and heard. Much of what he tells

us has been already printed in the numerous tours and guide-books,

which, in conjunction with steam-boats and railways, have familiarized

most Englishmen with the Rhine and its legends. It acquires a fresh

charm, however, from the present narrator's agreeable and pointed style,

and from his calling in the aid of his imagination to supply any little

deficiencies; rounding and filling up stories that would otherwise be

angular and incomplete. He also gives some agreeable caricatures, if

caricatures they may be called, of certain German eccentricities. Yet we

should have thought that so keen an observer of men and manners, might

have made more than he has done of the peculiarities of German society

and habits; but unfortunately M. Dumas appears to understand little, if

any, of the language, and this has doubtless been a great hindrance to

him, and has prevented him from making his book as characteristic as his

Italian sketches. Nevertheless he is piquant enough in some places. We

will give his droll account of his entrance into Rhenish Prussia. After

being robbed by the innkeeper at Liege, he gets into the Aix-la-Chapelle

diligence; and, on reading the printed ticket that has been given to him

at the coach-office, finds that he has the fourth seat, and that he is

forbidden to change places with his neighbours, even by mutual consent.

"This military sort of strictness, still more than the abominable jargon

of the postilion, made me aware that I was about to enter the dominions

of King Frederick William. As I had a corner of the coach, the tyranny

of his Prussian majesty was tolerably endurable, and I soon fell fast

asleep. About three in the morning, just as day was breaking, I awoke,

and found that the diligence was standing still. I at first thought

there was an accident, and put my head out of the window to see what was

the matter. No accident had happened; no other coach was near--the road

was excellent. We were alone and motionless. I took my ticket out of my

pocket, read it from one end to the other, and having satisfied myself

that it was not forbidden to _speak_ in the diligence, I asked my

neighbour if we had been standing there long.

"'About twenty minutes,' was the answer.

"'And pray,' continued I, 'can you tell me what we are doing here?'

"'We are waiting.'

"'Ah! we are waiting. And for what?'

"'For the time.'

"'What time?'

"'The time at which we are allowed to arrive.'

"'There is a time fixed for arriving, then?'

"'Every thing is fixed in Prussia.'

"'And if we arrived before the time?'

"'The conductor would be punished.'

"'And if after?'

"'He would also be punished.'

"'Ah! that is very well arranged.'

"'Every thing is well arranged in Prussia.'

"I bowed assentingly. Not for worlds would I have contradicted a

gentleman possessed of such an exalted opinion of his country and its

institutions, and who answered my questions so courteously and

laconically. My acquiescence appeared to gratify him. I felt encouraged,

and continued my enquiries.

"'Pardon me, sir, but at what hour ought the diligence to arrive at

Aix-la-Chapelle?'

"'At twenty-five minutes to five.'

"'But if the conductor's watch were slow?'

"'His watch can never be slow.'

"'Indeed! And why so?'

"'Opposite to where he sits, and under lock and key, there is a watch

which is regulated before starting by the clock at the coach-office. The

conductor knows at what hour he should pass through each town and

village on his route, and he makes the postilions hurry or slacken their

pace accordingly, so as to arrive at Aix-la-Chapelle exactly at the

right time.'

"'But with those precautions, how is it that we are obliged to wait upon

the road?'

"'The conductor has doubtless followed your example, and slept, and the

postilions have taken advantage of that to go quicker.'

"'Well, since we have still some time to remain here, I will get out and

stretch my legs a little.'

"'It is not allowed to get out of the diligence in Prussia.'

"'Indeed! That is very agreeable. I wished particularly to look at that

castle on the other side of the road.'

"'That is Emmaburg. It is the scene of the famous legend of _Eginhard

and Emma_.'

"'Really! Be so obliging as to change places with me for a moment, that

I may look at it through the window.'

"'I should be most happy, sir; but in Prussia it is not allowed to

change places.'

"'True, true! How could I forget it? I beg your pardon, sir.'

"'These tamned Frenchmans, they do noting but shatter and talk!' said a

fat German sitting opposite to me, opening his mouth for the first time

since we had left Liege, but still keeping his eyes shut.

"'You were saying, sir----?' said I, not particularly gratified by the

remark.

"'I say noting--I shleep.'

"'_Shleep_ as much as you like, but try not to dream aloud, eh? Or, if

you dream, dream in your mother tongue.'

"The German began to snore.

"'Postilion, _vorwarts!_' shouted the conductor.

"We were off at a gallop. I put my head out of the window to try to get

a view of the ruins, but it was vain; they had disappeared behind an

angle of the road. At twenty-five minutes to five, not a second later or

earlier, we drove into the coach-yard at Aix-la-Chapelle."

At Cologne M. Dumas pauses, and fills a hundred pages with the

cathedral, and the legend attaching to it. Most of our readers are

probably aware that the above-named church was commenced by an architect

whose name has been forgotten, and who procured the design for the

building from Satan himself, upon the usual condition of giving a

promissory note for his soul. A certain Father Clement, however, a very

knowing priest, of whom the arch-tempter stood in almost as great awe as

he had ever done of St Dunstan of nose-pulling celebrity, came to the

assistance of the builder, and put him up to a stratagem, by which he

avoided signing away his spiritual part, although he still obtained

possession of the plan for the cathedral. Satan confessed himself

outwitted, but prophesied that the building should never be finished,

and that its builder's name should not go down to posterity. The latter

part of the prediction has been accomplished; but as the present King of

Prussia has declared his intention of finishing the work that has been

so magnificently begun, it seems probable Beelzebub may prove mistaken

in one portion of his prophecy.

Cologne being a large city, somewhat Frenchified in its ways, M. Dumas

manages pretty well as regards eating and drinking; but, as he ascends

the river, matters get worse. He arrives at Bonn at the hour of the one

o'clock meal, called the first dinner, and we find him expatiating on

the subject of German appetites and feeding.

"The Germans eat from morning till night. On opening their eyes, at

seven o'clock in the morning, they take their coffee--at eleven,

breakfast--at one, the little dinner, (a sort of luncheon)--at

three, dinner--at five, another meal, nondescript, nameless, and

abundant--at nine, a tremendous supper, preparatory to going to bed.

Tea, cakes, and sandwiches, fill up the intervals."

This is really only a moderate exaggeration on the part of M. Dumas.

Five meals a-day, three of them solid, meat-devouring, wine-bibbing

feeds, are the regular allowance of every well-conditioned, well-to-do,

comfortable Rhinelander. We do not consider Frenchmen small eaters,

whatever they may consider themselves--if they eat little of each dish,

they eat of a vast number; but for examples of positive voracity,

commend us to a German table-d'hote. A coachful of French _commis

voyageurs_, assembled, after a ten hours' fast, round the luxurious

profusion and delicacies of a Languedocian dinner, would appear mere

babes and sucklings in the eating way, compared to a party of Germans at

their one o'clock feed. The difference is nearly as great as between the

Lady Amine eating rice with a bodkin, and the same fair one battening

ghoulishly upon the cold meat in the cemetery. Nothing can equal the

persevering industry with which a German crams himself at a public

table, where, having to pay a fixed sum for his dinner, he always seems

desirous to get as much as he can for his money. The _obligato_ bowl of

soup is followed by sundry huge slices of boiled beef, sufficient of

themselves for an ordinary man's dinner, but by no means sufficing for a

German's; then come fowl and meat, fish, puddings and creams, and meat

again; sweet, sour, and greasy--greasy, sweet, and sour, alternating and

following one another in inextricable and interminable confusion. Every

body eats of every thing largely and voraciously, and the short pauses

between the appearance of the dishes are filled up by nibblings at such

salutary and digestible _extremets_ as raw hams and herrings, pickled

cucumbers, and pickled grapes! German cookery is famous for odd

mixtures. M. Dumas is rather amusing on this head.

"At Bonn, the dinner they served me consisted of an unintelligible

sort of soup, full of round balls of a pasty substance; beef stewed

with prunes, hare dressed with preserves, wild boar with cherries;

it was impossible to take more pains to spoil things which

separately, would have been very commendable eating. I tasted them

each in turn, and each time sent away my plate. When I sent away the

wild boar, the waiter could stand it no longer.

"'Does not monsieur like wild boar with cherries?'

"'I detest it!'

"'That is singular; a great poet like monsieur.'

"'You are mistaken, my man: I make verses perhaps; but that is no

reason for calling me a great poet, nor for ruining the coats of my

stomach with your infernal fricassees. Besides, supposing I were a

great poet, what has poetry got to do with pig and cherry sauce?'

"'Our great Schiller adored that dish.'

"'Our tastes differ, then. I have no objection to William Tell or

Wallenstein, but---- take away your pig.'

"The waiter carried off the wild boar: meantime I tasted the beef

and prunes, but, to do more than taste it, was out of the question;

and, when the man returned, I bid him change my plate. His

astonishment was greater than ever.

"'What!' cried he, 'does not monsieur like beef and prunes?'

"'No.'

"'M. Goethe was passionately addicted to it.'

"'I am sorry not to have the same addictions as the author of Faust.

Make me an omelet.'

"In a few minutes back came the waiter with the omelet. It looked

uncommonly nice, and I was uncommonly hungry. Nevertheless, I could

not swallow the first mouthful.

"'What the devil have you put into your omelet? An omelet should be

made with butter, eggs, salt, and pepper.'

"'Certainly, sir. It _is_ made with butter, eggs, salt, and pepper.'

"'And what else?'

"'A little flour.'

"'And besides?'

"'A little cheese.'

"'Go on.'

"'Some saffron.'

"'And then?'

"'Cloves, nutmeg, and a little thyme.'

"'Enough, enough! Take away your omelet.'"

The master of the hotel, who is an intelligent personage, now makes his

appearance, and M. Dumas at last finds that, by ordering a dinner _a la

Francaise_, he can get something eatable. Encouraged by this success, he

ventures, when bedtime comes, to petition for a bed in which a Frenchman

can sleep. This requires a little explanation, which will be best given

in his own words.

"In France we are pretty much accustomed to sleep in a bed; that is

to say, on a couch consisting of a frame some three and a half or

four feet wide, and some six or six and a half feet long. On this

frame or bedstead we place two or three mattresses and a feather

bed, a pair of sheets, a counterpane, a pillow and bolster; we then

tuck in the edges of these coverings, the person for whom the bed is

intended slips in between the sheets, and if his health is good and

his conscience clear, and he has not been drinking too much green

tea or strong coffee, he goes to sleep. In a bed of this description

any body can sleep, whether German, Spaniard, Italian, Hindoo, or

Chinese, unless he makes up his mind not to do so. But in Germany

things are very different. A German bed is composed as follows:--

"First, a bedstead two or two and a half feet wide, and five to five

and a half feet long. Procrustes must decidedly have been a German.

On the bedstead they place a sack of shavings, on the sack of

shavings an enormous feather bed, and then a sheet, shorter and

narrower than the feather bed, and which we should call a towel.

Upon this sheet or towel comes a quilted coverlet of the same size,

and a sort of cushion stuffed with feathers. Two or three pillows,

piled up at the head of the bed, complete this singular edifice.

"When a Frenchman gets into a bed of this kind, as he does not think

of taking any particular precautions, in about five minutes the

pillows fall on one side, the coverlet on the other; the sheet rolls

itself up and disappears; so that the aforesaid Frenchman finds

himself with one side of his body uncovered and frozen, and the

other side sunk in the feather bed and perspiring profusely. This

arises, say the Germans, from the circumstance of the French being

so impetuous and lively. With a calm and phlegmatic German the case

is quite different. The latter raises the counterpane very

cautiously, creeps underneath, and places himself with his back

against the pillows, and his feet against the bottom of the bed,

screwing himself up into the shape of the letter Z: he then draws

the covering over his knees, shuts his eyes, goes to sleep, and

awakes the next morning in the same position. To do this it is

necessary to be a German, and as I am not one, I had not slept a

wink since I had been in the country; I was growing as thin as a

lath, and I had a cough that seemed to tear my chest open. This is

why I asked for a bed _a la Francaise_. Mine host had fortunately

six of them. When I heard that, I could have embraced him with

pleasure."

The villages of Winnebourg and Metternich near Coblentz, the former the

birthplace, the latter the property, of Prince Metternich, lead M. Dumas

into a little digression on the subject of the celebrated diplomatist.

The family name, we are informed, was originally Metter, but received

the addition of the last syllable in the following manner:--

"In one of the great battles of the fifteenth century, the emperor

of Germany saw an entire regiment take to flight with the exception

of one man, who stood his ground and defended himself gallantly,

till he fell covered with wounds. The emperor enquired his name. It

was Metter."

That night at supper the emperor said, talking of the regiment in

question--"They all fled, but Metter _nicht_." Every body knows that

"nicht" is the German for not. The family adopted the additional

syllable, and hence the origin of the name of Metternich.

M. de Metternich, it appears, is a great collector of autographs, and of

course his position has facilitated the gratification of this taste. His

collection is rich in royal, imperial, and princely letters; nor is

there any lack of odes from German poets, and sonnets from Italian

_improvisatori_. One day, however, it occurred to him that, now the

public press had become a power in many countries, he ought to have the

autographs of a few journalists, in order to complete his collection;

and as in Italy and Germany, thanks to the censorship, there are plenty

of journals but no journalists, he was obliged to send to France.

Amongst others, M. Jules Janin (one of the editors of the _Journal des

Debats_) received a most polite request for an autograph from the rival

of M. de Talleyrand. Janin immediately took up his pen, and wrote as

follows:--

"Received from his Excellency Prince Metternich, twenty-four

bottles of Johannisberg, first quality.

"Paris, 15th May 1838."

A month afterwards there arrived at Paris the twenty-four bottles of

wine, of which Janin, with a confidence that the prince no doubt knew

how to appreciate, had acknowledged receipt beforehand. M. de Metternich

has preserved Janin's witty autograph with the greatest care. I doubt

very much if Janin has preserved M. de Metternich's wine.

M. Dumas finds some compensation for the badness of German beds in the

excellence of German roads. His soundest sleep is always obtained in the

diligence. He takes a nap from Mayence to Frankfort; but on entering the

latter city is shaken out of his slumbers by an Austrian soldier, who

demands his passport. In consequence of an incident that had lately

occurred, the soldiery were particularly on the alert with regard to

passports. M. Dumas relates the anecdote in his usual pointed and

effective manner.

"The free city of Frankfort, which, in its capacity of a free city,

is garrisoned by an Austrian and a Prussian regiment, had been laid

under contribution during the spring fair by a most expert

pickpocket, whom the police had in vain endeavoured to detect and

capture. The fair was nearly at an end; and, in order that the thief

might not escape, the sentries at the gates were directed to allow

no man to leave the town without sending him into the guard-house to

have his passport examined, and to see if his height, features, and

appearance corresponded with the description on the paper. This

order given, the authorities did not trouble their heads any more

about the matter, feeling quite certain that the offender could not

escape.

"On the other hand, the unfortunate thief felt very uncomfortable.

Nature had endowed him with rather a remarkable physiognomy, and it

was difficult to find a passport to fit him unless it were made on

purpose; so that out of five or six which he had in his possession,

not one would do. At last he made up his mind to walk out of the

town without a passport, as if he were one of the town's-people

going for a stroll. He accordingly took a cane in his hand, and

lounging along with an affectation of great indifference, approached

a gate at which the Austrians were on guard. But the sentry had his

orders, and when the stranger drew near--

"'Who goes there?' he vociferated.

"'A friend,' answered the thief.

"'Advance, friend!' said the sentry with a significant rattle of his

musket--a sort of intimation that non-compliance might be rewarded

by a bullet.

"The thief walked up to the soldier.

"'Your passport,' demanded the latter.

"'My passport!' repeated the thief in tone of infinite astonishment,

'I have none.'

"'All the better for you,' said the sentry, shouldering his musket.

'If you had _had_ one I should have been obliged to send you into

the guard-house to have it examined, and that would have detained

you a good half hour. But since you have no passport you can't show

one, so you may pass.'

"And the intelligent warrior recommenced his monotonous promenade;

while the thief, profiting by his obliging permission, walked out of

the town."

Mannheim, the scene of Kotzebue's death, and his assassin's execution,

could hardly fail to detain M. Dumas. At Frankfort he applies to a

friend for an introduction to some person likely to give him details

concerning Kotzebue and Sand, and his friend procures him a letter

addressed to Mr Widemann, surgeon, Heidelberg. He has no letter for any

body at Mannheim, and after visiting Kotzebue's house, leaves that town

to proceed to Heidelberg. Just outside Mannheim he causes the postilion

to stop, while he contemplates the place of the mad student's execution,

which goes by the name of "_Sand's Himmelfahrtwiese_," or the meadow of

Sand's ascension to heaven. It is a green meadow intersected by a

rivulet, and situated within a few hundred yards of the town. While

gazing at this field, and trying to conjecture the exact spot where the

scaffold had stood, a stranger approaches of whom our traveller makes an

enquiry. They fall into conversation, and the newcomer proves to be the

governor of the prison in which Sand had been confined. Delighted at

this rencontre, M. Dumas turns back and stops a day or two longer at

Mannheim, copying some letters of Sand's, and collecting materials which

fill several chapters of his book. He learns from his new friend that

the Mr Widemann at Heidelberg, for whom he has a letter, is not only a

surgeon but also the public executioner, although as yet his services

have not been called into request in the latter capacity. It was his

father who decapitated Sand. The Heidelberg executioner is noble by

right of descent. The origin of his family's nobility is given by M.

Dumas as follows:--

"The evening of the day on which King Louis of Bavaria was crowned

emperor, there was a splendid ball at the town-hall, at which the

empress was present. Amongst the guests was a cavalier dressed

entirely in black, and having his face covered with a black mask. He

invited the empress to dance: she accepted, and, whilst they were

dancing together, another mask approached the emperor and asked him

if he knew who his wife's partner was. 'No,' replied the emperor,

'but I suppose it is some sovereign prince.'

"'Lower than that,' said the mask.

"'Some nobleman then--a count or baron.'

"'Lower than that.'

"'Perhaps with a knight.'

"'Lower still.'

"'With an esquire?'

"'Less than that.'

"'A page?'

"'You have not guessed it--lower still.'

"The emperor flushed crimson with anger.

"'A groom?' "'If that were all!' answered the unknown with a strange

laugh.

"'But who is it then?' cried the emperor.

"'Tear off his mask and you will see.'

"The emperor approached the sable cavalier, and tore off his mask.

It was the headsman.

"'Miscreant!' shouted the emperor, as his sword flashed from the

scabbard, 'commend thy soul to God before thou diest.'

"'Sire!' replied the headsman, falling on his knees, 'you may kill

me if you will; but the empress has not the less danced with me, and

the dishonour, if dishonour there be, is already incurred. Do better

than that: knight me; and if any one dares to speak evil of her

majesty, the same sword that executes justice shall vindicate her

fame.'

"The emperor reflected for a moment.

"'The advice is good,' said he at last. 'Henceforward you shall no

longer be called the headsman, but the last of the judges.' Then,

giving him three blows on the shoulder with his sword flat,

"'Rise!' he continued; 'from this hour you are the lowest among

nobles, and the first amongst burghers.'

"And accordingly since that day, in all public processions and

ceremonies, the executioner walks by himself, in rear of the nobles

and in front of the commoners."

Truly a most fantastical history, and one which leaves us in some doubt

whether it be a genuine legend of Heidelberg, or one of M. Dumas's

dreams in the diligence after dining upon pig and cherry sauce. At any

rate, if not true it is _ben trovato_.

Heidelberg, whither M. Dumas next proceeds, is to our mind one of the

pleasantest places near the Rhine, from which river it is now, thanks to

the railroad, within half an hour's journey. The country around is

delightful, and the town itself, owing to its possessing an university,

and to the vast number of strangers who visit and pass through it during

the summer months, is far more lively than most small German towns. The

kind of liveliness, however, caused by the presence of seven or eight

hundred students, is not always of the most agreeable character. It has

been the fashion in England to talk and write a vast deal about German

universities; and sundry well filled, or at least bulky tomes have been

devoted to accounts of the students' mode of life, their duels and

drinkings, and peculiarities of all kinds. Friend Howitt favoured us a

year or two ago with a corpulent volume--translated in part from the

MSS. of some _studiosus emeritus_--a sort of life in Heidelberg,

entering into great detail concerning university doings, and with

illustrations of a very sportive description; wherein mustached and

bespurred cavaliers are slashing at each other with broad swords, or

cantering over the country mounted upon gallant steeds, and looking

something between Dick Turpins and field-marshals in muftee. 'Tis a sad

thing to have too much imagination--it tempts a man to mislead his

neighbours; and no one who has read friend William's picturesque

descriptions of _Student Leben_, but would feel grievously disappointed

when he came to investigate the subject for himself. Nothing can be more

puerile and absurd, and in many instances disgusting, than the habitual

pastimes and amusements of the students; or at least of that large

majority of them who attend no lectures and study, nothing that they can

possibly avoid, but look upon their residence at the university as three

or four years to be devoted to smoking, beer-drinking, and scratching

one another's faces in duels. These duels, by the by, are pieces of the

most intense humbug that can be imagined. They take place now in the

large room of the inn at Ziegelhausen, a village on the banks of the

Neckar, about two miles from Heidelberg, and are fought with straight

swords, square but sharp at the extremity, and having guards as big as a

soup-plate.

Before the fight begins, the combatants don their defensive arms,

consisting of a strong and broad-brimmed hat protecting the head and

eyes, an immense leathern breastplate defending the chest and stomach, a

padded case, also of leather, which shields the arm from wrist to

shoulder, and an impenetrable cravat which protects the neck up to the

ears. The nose, and a bit of each cheek, is all that can be possibly

wounded. Thus equipped the heroes set to work, slashing away at each

other, (it is forbidden to thrust,) shaving off pieces of their padded

armour, and looking exceeding fierce and valiant the while; until,

after a greater or less time, according as the combatants are equal in

skill or not, one of them gets a scratch across the nose, or small

eyelet hole in the cheek, which terminates this caricature of a duel.

Since "young Germany" finds amusement in so harmless a practice, it

might very well be allowed them; provided they afterwards, like good

boys, took their books and learned their lessons. But such a proceeding

would be by no means consistent with the _Burschen-Freiheit_--the

academic freedom of which these hopeful youths make their boast. To

celebrate the valour of the victory, and show sympathy with the

sufferings of the vanquished--whose wound is by this time dressed with

an inch of sticking plaster--the party repairs to a tavern to breakfast;

and there the morning is killed over beer and Rhine wine till one

o'clock, by which time some of them are usually more than half tipsy.

They then repair to the table-d'hote, dine, drink more, and finally

stagger home to sleep off their libations. We have more than once, in

German university towns, seen students reeling-drunk at four in the

afternoon.

About seven in the evening, the _kneipes_ or drinking-houses begin to

fill. In all of these there are rooms set apart for the different clubs

of students to assemble in; and in those sanctuaries they put on the

caps and colours of their communities, which they have of late years

been forbidden to wear in public. On the ribands which they wear round

their necks, are inscribed the date of their various duels. A barrel of

beer is now broached, pipes are loaded and lighted, and they sit the

whole evening, sotting, smoking, and singing songs about the Rhine,

liberty, and fatherland, with ear-splitting and interminable choruses of

_Viva lera lera_. A German student's song generally consists of couplets

of two lines, with a chorus that lasts a quarter of an hour.

The quantity of beer consumed by some of these heroes is almost

incredible. They become actually bloated with it. One of the most

important and respected persons at a German university is the Beer King,

who ought to be able to drink, not any given quantity, but an unlimited

one; to be perpetually drinking, in short. M. Dumas tells us, that the

reigning monarch of malt at Heidelberg is able to absorb twelve

schoppens of beer, or six of wine, while the clock strikes twelve. A

Heidelberg schoppen is very nearly an English bottle. This is rather

hard to swallow, M. Dumas. Either the drinker is very fast, or the clock

very slow. We can vouch, however, for the scarcely less astonishing

fact, of there being drinkers at the universities who will imbibe

twenty-five bottles of beer at a sitting. The German beer is, of course,

not of a very intoxicating nature.

From beer to tobacco the transition is natural enough; and we cannot

conclude our gossip about the Rhine without a word or two as to the

frightful abuse made by the Germans of the Indian weed. We are not of

the number of those who condemn the moderate use of tobacco, but, on the

contrary, know right well how to appreciate its soothing and cheering

effects; but the difference is wide between a limited enjoyment of the

habit, and the stupefying, besotting excess to which it is carried by

the Germans. The dirty way, too, in which they smoke, renders the custom

as annoying to those who live amongst them, as it must be unwholesome

and detrimental to themselves. It is possible to smoke much, and yet

cleanly: take the Spaniard for instance--unquestionably a great smoker;

yet the difference between smoking on the Rhine or Elbe, and on the

Manzanares or Ebro, is immense--the one the gluttony and abuse, the

other the refinement of the practice. While Don Espanol, with his

fragrant _puro_, or straw or paper covered cigarrito, smoketh cleanly,

spitteth not, uses his tobacco, as he uses most things, like a

gentleman; the _werther Deutscher_ takes his huge pipe, rarely cleaned

and with the essence of tobacco oozing from every joint, and filling it

from a bag, or rather sack, of coarse and vile-smelling tobacco, puffs

forth volumes of smoke, expectorating _ad nauseam_ at intervals of a

minute or less. No considerations of place or person hinder him from

indulging in his favourite pastime. In steam-boats, in diligences, in

the public walks and promenades, into the dining-rooms of hotels, every

where does the pipe intrude itself; carried as habitually as a

walking-cane; and even when not in actual use, emitting the most evil

odour from the bowl and tube, saturated as they are with tobacco juice.

However unpleasant all this may be to foreigners, especially to English

ladies accustomed to the more cleanly habits of their own countrymen,

the German dames are perfectly reconciled to it. Had we to draw a

picture of domestic felicity on the Rhine, we would sketch it thus:--a

summer evening--a flower garden--a table with tea or coffee--a dozen

chairs occupied by persons of both sexes--the women big-feeted,

blue-eyed, placid creatures, knitting stockings--the men heavy and

awkward, each with a monstrous signet-ring on the dirty forefinger of

his right hand, smoking unceasingly, and puffing the vapour into the

faces of their better halves, who heed it not, and occasionally may even

be seen replenishing with their own delicate digits the enormous

porcelain or meerschaum bowls of the pipes. If you doubt the accuracy of

our description, reader, go and judge for yourself. The distance is

short, and summer is at hand. Put yourself on board a steamboat, whisk

over to Ostend or Antwerp, and thence rail and rattle it down to the

Rhine. You shall not be three days on German soil without encountering a

score such groups as the one we have just sketched.

THE MONSTER-MISERY OF LITERATURE.

BY A MOUSE BORN OF THE MOUNTAIN.

Be under no apprehension, gentle public, that you are about to be kept

in suspense touching the moral of our argumentation, as too often in the

pamphlets addressed in Johnsonian English to Thompsonian understandings,

wherein a pennyworth of matter is set forth by a monstrous quantity of

phrase. We mean to speak to the point; we mean to enlighten your

understanding as by the smiting of a lucifer-match. Refrain, therefore,

from running your eye impatiently along the page, as you are doing at

this moment, in hopes of discovering, italicized, the secret of the

enigma; for we have no intention of keeping you another moment ignorant

that the monster-misery of literature is--guess! Which of you hath hit

it? The monster-misery of literature is--THE CIRCULATING LIBRARY!

In this devout conviction, devote we to the infernal gods the memory of

the Athenian republic--the first keeper of a circulating library. Every

tyro is aware that this Sams or Ebers of antiquity lent out to Ptolemy

of Egypt, for a first-rate subscription of fifteen talents, the works of

Euripides, Eschylus, and Sophocles; thereby affording a precedent for

the abominable practice, fatal to bookmakers and booksellers, which has

converted the waters of Castalia into their present disgraceful puddle!

Every scribbler of the day who has a Perryian pen in hand, is pleased to

exercise it on the decline of the drama; one of the legitimate targets

of penny-a-liners. But how inadequately are the goose quills, and

ostrich quills, phoenix quills, and roc quills, of the few standard

critics of the age, directed towards the monstrous abuse of public

patience which will render the Victorian age the sad antithesis of the

Elizabethan, in the literary history of the land! Content so long as

they can get a new work, _tale quale_, as a peg whereon to hang the

rusty garments of their erudition, not a straw care they for the

miserable decline and fall of the great empire of letters; an empire

overrun by what Goths--what Huns--what Vandals!--by the iniquitous and

barbarous hosts of circulating libraries!

It has been agreed for some centuries past, that the only modern Maecenas

is the publisher. The days of patrons are past; and the author is

forced to look for the reward of his labour to the man who, by selling

the greatest number of copies to the public, can bestow the greatest

number of pounds upon his pains. In order to augment this amount, the

bibliopole naturally consults the taste of his customers; and nearly the

sole remaining customers of the modern bookseller are--the circulating

libraries. For what man in his senses who, for an annual mulct of

half-a-dozen sovereigns, commands the whole range of modern literature,

would waste his substance in loading his house with books of doubtful

interest? Who that, by a message of his servant into Bond Street,

procures the last new novel cut and dry, instead of wet from the press,

and demanding the labour of the paper-knife, would proceed to the

extremity of a purchase? And the result is, that Messrs Folio and

Duodecimo, in order to procure satisfactory orders from the circulating

libraries of the multitudinous cities of this deluded empire, issue

orders to their helots, Mr Scribblescrawl and Mrs Wiredrawn, requiring

them to produce per annum so many sets of three volumes, adapted to the

atmosphere wherein they are fated to flourish.

It is an avowed fact, that the publishers of the day will purchase the

copyrights of only such works as "the libraries will take;" which

libraries, besotted by the mystic charm of three volumes, immutable as

the sacred triad of the Graces or Destinies, would negative without a

division such a work as the "Vicar of Wakefield" were it now to undergo

probation. "Robinson Crusoe" or "Paul and Virginia" would be returned

unread to their authors, with a civil note of "extremely sorry to

decline," &c. "The Man of Feeling" would be made to feel his

insignificance. "Thinks I to Myself" might think in vain; and the

"Cottagers of Glenburnie" retain their rural obscurity. So much for the

measure of the maw of the circulating library. Of its taste and palate

it is difficult to speak with moderation; for those of Caffraria or

Otaheite might be put to the blush.

The result, however, of this fatal ascendancy is, that not a publisher

who has the fear of the _Gazette_ before his eyes, presumes to hazard a

guinea on speculations in the belles-lettres. Poetry is seldom, if ever,

published except at the cost of the poet; and the foreman of one of the

leading London houses is deputed to apprize aspiring rhymesters, that

"his firm considers poetry a mild species of insanity"--_Anglice_, that

it does not suit the appetite of the circulating library! For behold!

this despot of bookmakers must have length, breadth, and thickness, to

fill the book boxes dispatched to its subscribers in the country, as

well as satisfy in town the demands of its charming subscriber, Lady

Sylvester Daggerwood, and all her daughters.

It happens that the said Lady Sylvester does not like Travels, unless

"nice little ladylike books of travels," such as the Quarterly informed

us last year, in a fit of fribbledom, were worthy the neat little

crowquills of lady-authors. Nor will she hear of Memoirs, unless light,

sparkling, and scandalous, as nearly resembling those of Grammont as

decency will allow. Essays she abominates; nor can she exactly

understand the use of quartoes, unless, as Swift describes the merit of

"A Chrysostom to smooth his band in"--

to serve for flattening between the leaves her rumpled embroidery or

netting!

Now you are simply and respectfully asked, beloved public, what must be

the feelings of a man of genius, or of any sensible scholarly

individual, when, after devoting years of his life to a work of standard

excellence--a work such as in France would obtain him access to the

Academy, or in Russia or Prussia a pension and an order of merit--he is

told by the publisher, who in Great Britain supplies the place of these

fountains of honour and reward, that "the public of the present day has

no taste for serious reading;" for Messrs Folio and Duodecimo cannot, of

course, afford to regard a few dons of the universities, or a few county

bookclubs, parsonically presided, as representatives of the public! What

the disappointed man, thus enlightened, must think of "glorious Apollo"

when he goes to bed that night, we should be sorry to conjecture!

"The public of the present day"--_Ang._ the subscribers to the

circulating libraries--constitute, to his cultivated mind, a world

unknown. The public _he_ has been wasting his life to address, is such a

public as was addressed by Addison, by Swift, by Steele, or by the

greater writers of the days of Elizabeth. "Bless his fine wits," we

could laugh at his misconception, were we not rather inclined to cry! In

instances easy to be cited, (but that there were miching malecho in the

deed,) insult has been added to injury, and the anguish depicted in the

face of the mortified man of letters been assuaged by friendly advice to

"try his hand at something more saleable--something in the style of

Harrison Ainsworth or Peter Priggins!"

O ye Athenians! to what base uses have we come, by the influence of your

malpractices of old!

But all this is far from the blackest side of the picture. You have seen

only the fortunes of the rejected of the circulating libraries; wait

till you have studied the fate of their favourites--victims whom, like

the pet-dogs of children, the publishers force to stand on their

hind-legs, and be bedizened in their finery; or pet pussy-cats, whom

they fondle into wearing spectacles and feeding on macaroones, instead

of pursuing their avocations as honest mousers. The favourite author of

the circulating libraries has a great deal to envy in the treadmill!

In the days when there existed a reading, in place of a skimming

public--in the days when circulating libraries were not--the writer who

followed his own devices in the choice of the subject, plot, title,

treatment, and extent of his book, and made his labour a labour of love,

had some chance of being cherished as the favourite of the fireside;

installed on the shelf, and taken down, like Goldsmith or Defoe or

Bunyan, for an hour's gossip; cried over by the young girl of the

family, diverting the holiday of the schoolboy, and exercising the

eyesight of the good old grandmother. But how is this ever to be

achieved nowadays? Who will be ever thumbed over and spelled over as

these have been?

"Invent another Vicar or another Crusoe," say the critics, "and you will

see."

We should NOT see! No bookseller would publish them, because "no

circulating library would take them;" for these bibliopoles know to a

page what will be taken. Several of them have got, and several others

have had, the conduct of a circulating library on their hands; and so

far from venturing to present a single-volumed or double-volumed work to

their subscribers, they would insist upon the dilution of the genius of

Oliver or Daniel into the adequate number of pages ere they risked paper

and print. O public! O dear, ingenuous public! Think how you might have

ceased to delight in even the cosmogony-man, if his part had been a

hundred times rehearsed in your ears; or what the matchless Lady Blarney

and the incomparable Miss Carolina Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs (I love, as

old Primrose says, to repeat the whole name) might have become, as the

"light conversationists" of three octavo volumes! Shakspeare was forced

to kill Mercutio early in the play, lest Mercutio should kill _him_. We

feel a devout conviction that Miss Carolina Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs

would have burked Goldsmith!

And then the incomparable Robinson! Conceive the interlarding of a funny

Mrs Friday to eke out the matter, with a comical king of the Cannibal

islands "to lighten the story"--according to circulating library demand!

Unhappy Defoe! thy standing in the pillory had been as nothing compared

with such a condemnation!

We beseech you, therefore, deluded public, when assured by critical

misleadment that such writers no longer exist, do, as you are often

requested to do by letters in the newspapers--from parties remanded by

the police-offices for some hanging matter--"suspend your judgment," or

you will deserve credit for very little. We promise you that there _are_

giants on the earth in these days, ay, and famous giants of their

cubits! But when a giant is made to drivel, his drivelings are very

little better than those of a pigmy. And we swear to you, (under

correction from the parish vestry, which is entitled to half-a-crown an

oath,) that the circulating libraries would make a driveler of Seneca!

Under the circulating library tyranny, Johnson himself would have been

forced to break up his long words into smaller pieces, to supply due

volume for three volumes.

Above all, we have no hesitation in declaring that the circulating

libraries are indictable for manslaughter, in the matter of the death of

Scott. They killed him, body and soul! In better times, when books were

bought, not hired, the sale of the first half dozen of his mighty novels

would have sufficed both the public and the author for thrice as many

years. They would have been purchased by all people of good condition,

as the works of Richardson were purchased, and read, and conned, and got

by heart. But behold! the circulating libraries "wanted novelty." It

suited them better to invest their capital in half a dozen new and

trashy books--such as extend their catalogue from No. 2470 to

2500--instead of half a dozen copies of the one sterling work, which

increases their stock in trade and diminishes their stock in consols,

but leaves the catalogue, which is the advertisement of their

perfections, halting at No. 2470.

Now, as it happened that the same boss of constructiveness which has

endowed our language with such a world of creations from the pen of

Scott, betrayed him also into inventiveness _per_ force of brick and

mortar--just as the same bent of genius which created the _Castle of

Otranto_, created also that other colossus of lath and plaster,

_Strawberry Hill_--the author of the Scotch novels was fain to sacrifice

to the evil genius of the times; and behold! as the assiduous slave of

the circulating libraries, he extinguished one of the greatest spirits

of Great Britain. But for the hateful factory system of the twice three

volumes per annum, he would have been still alive among us--happy and

happy-making, in a green old age--watching over the maturity of his

grandchildren, and waited upon by the worship of the land.

Therefore again we say, as we said a short time ago,--O ye Athenians!

what have ye not to answer for in the consequence of your malpractices

of old!

The only great success of the day in works of fiction, (for the laurels

of Bulwer have been spindled among the rest by the factitious atmosphere

of the circulating libraries), is that of Boz. And we attribute, in a

great measure, the enormous circulation of his early works, to their

having set at defiance the paralysing influence of the monster-misery.

Shilling numbers were as the dragon's teeth. They rose up like armed

men, and slew the circulating librarians. People were forced to buy them

if they wanted to read them; and they were bought. Those who desired to

read "Night and Morning," were not forced to purchase it, and it was not

bought; and the circulation of the two works consequently remains as

2000 to 35,000 copies.

The state and prospects of authors, however, concerns you less, dear

public, than the state and prospects of literature. You are a

contemplative body of men, and can see into a millstone as far as most

nations. You make leagues and anti-leagues for the sake of your morsel

of bread; and teach the million to sing to your own tune; and, weary of

keeping your heads above water, tunnel your way below it; nor will you

allow the suffering shirtmakers of your metropolis to be put upon, nor

Don Carlos, nor Queen Pomare, nor any other victim of oppression. You

applauded Alice Lowe, and shook hands with Courvoisier at the gallows;

and it is clear you stand no nonsense, and bear no malice.

Be so good, therefore, as seriously to consider what sort of figure you

will cut in the eyes of posterity, if this kind of thing is suffered to

go on.

There is not one publisher in the three kingdoms (we throw down the

gauntlet) who would give an adequate sum of money for any new historical

work. There is not one publisher in the three kingdoms who would give

even a moderate sum for a poem. We state the case liberally; for our

conviction is, that they would refuse one poor half-crown. So much for

the _prospects_; for, without a premium production is null.

As regards the state of literature, take out your pencils, (you all

carry pencils, to calculate either the long odds or the odds on

'Change,) and make out a list of the works published during the last

five years, likely to be known, _even by name_, a hundred years hence!

It is some comfort to feel, that _by sight_ they cannot be known--that

few of them will survive to disgrace us--that the circulating libraries

possess the one merit of wear and tear for the destruction of their

filthy generation, like Saturn of old; for it would grieve us to think

of even the trunks of the two thousandth century being lined with what

lines the brains of our contemporaries. So that in the year of grace two

thousand and forty-four, we shall have the Lady Blarney of Kilburn

Square (the Grosvenor Square of that epoch,) enquiring of the Miss

Carolina Wilhelmina Amelia Skeggs of Croydon Place (the Belgium

Square)--"My dear soul, what _could_ those poor people do to amuse

themselves? They had positively _no_ books! After Scott's time till the

middle of the nineteenth century not a single novelist; after the death

of Byron, not a poet! I believe there was an historian of the name of

Hallam, not much heard of; and the other day, at a book-stall, I picked

up an odd volume of an odd writer named Carlyle. But it is really

curious to consider how utterly the belles-lettres were in abeyance."

To which, of course, Miss C. W. A. S.--(even Dr Panurge could not get

through the whole name again!)--"My dear love! they had Blackwood's

Magazine, which, like the Koran after the burning of the Alexandrian

library, supplied the place of ten millions of volumes!"

But, alas! some Burchell may be sitting by, to exclaim "FUDGE!"

Some groper into archives will bring forth one of those

never-to-be-sufficiently-abominated catalogues of Bond and other

streets, showing that, on a moderate calculation, twenty books were

published per diem, which, at the end of three months, possessed the

value of so many bushels of oyster-shells!

And then, pray, what will you have to say for yourselves, O public! from

your tombs in Westminster Abbey or your catacombs at Kensal Green? Which

among you will dare come forward, with blue lights in his hand and

accompanied by a trombone, like the ghost of Ninus in Semiramide, and

say--"We warned these people to write for immortality. We told them it

was their duty to stick in a few oaks for posterity, as well as their

Canada poplars and Scotch firs. It was not our fault that they chose to

grow nothing but underwood. It was the fault of the circulating

libraries, which, instead of allowing the milk of human genius to set

for cream, diluted it with _malice prepense_, and drenched us with milk

and water even to loathing!"

No, dear public! you will put your hand in your breeches' pocket like a

crocodile, as you do now, and say nothing. Yon are fully aware how much

of the fault is your own; but you are stultified and hardened to shame.

With the disgrace of your National Gallery, and National Regency

Buildings, and Pimlico Palace, and all your other vulgarisms and

trivialities on your shoulders, you bully your way out of your disgrace

of duncehood, like Mike Lambourne on forgetting his part in the

Kenilworth pageant. "For your part, you can do very well without

book-learning. You've got Shakspeare, and if with that a nation can't

face the literature of Europe, the deuce is in it! With Cocker's

arithmetic and Shakspeare, any public that knows what it's about, may

snap its fingers at the world!"

Such, such are the demoralizing results of the ascendancy of the

circulating libraries! Such is the monster-misery of literature!

Again, therefore, we say, confound those fifteen talents! What have ye

not to answer for, O ye Athenians! in the consequences of your

malpractices of old!

MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN.

PART XI.

"Have I not in my time heard lions roar?

Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind,

Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?

Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,

And Heavens artillery thunder in the skies?

Have I not in the pitched battle heard

Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"

SHAKSPEARE.

Our procession had more than the usual object of those dreadful

displays: it was at once an act of revenge and an act of policy. During

the period while the gates of the convent shut out the living world from

us, a desperate struggle had been going on between the two ruling

factions. In this contest for life and death, the more furious, of

course, triumphed; such is the history of rabble revolution in all ages.

The Girondist with his eloquence naturally fell before the Jacobin with

his libel; the Girondist, affecting a deference for law, was trampled by

the Jacobin, who valued nothing but force; the tongue and the pen were

extinguished by the dagger; and this day was the consummation. A debate

in the Convention, of singular talent and unexampled ferocity, had

finished by the impeachment of the principal Girondists. Justice here

knew nothing of the "law's delay;" and the fallen orators now headed our

melancholy line, bound, bareheaded, half naked, and more than half dead

with weariness, shame, and the sense of ruin;--there could scarcely be

more in the blow which put an end to all their perturbations on this

side of the grave.

We had frequent halts, and I had full leisure to gaze around; for,

rapidly as the guillotine performed its terrible task, our procession

had been extended by some additional victims from every prison which we

passed; and we passed so many that I began to think the city one vast

dungeon. What strange curiosity is it that could collect such myriads to

look upon us? Every street was crowded with a living mass; every

casement was filled; every roof presented a line of eyes straining for a

glance below. Instead of the crowd of a populous city, I could have

believed that I saw the population of a kingdom poured in and compressed

into the narrow streets through which we wound our slow way. From time

to time a shout arose, as some conspicuous member of the Convention made

his appearance in the vehicle of death: then execrations, scoffs, and

insults, of every bitterness, were poured upon the unfortunate being;

who seldom attempted to retaliate, or make any other return but a

gesture of despair, or a supplication to be suffered to die in peace.

Yet all was not cruelty nor insensibility. I saw instances, where

friends, bold enough to brave the vengeance of the government, rushed

forward to take a last grasp of the hand that must so soon be cold; and

my heart was wrung by partings between still dearer objects and the

condemned;--wives rushing forward through the multitude; children held

up to their father's arms; beautiful and graceful young women, forcing

their wild way through the line of troops, to take a last look, and

exchange a last word, with those whom they would have rejoicingly

followed to the tomb.

Our progress lasted half the day, and the sun was already near its

setting, when the waggon in which I sat turned into the Place de Greve.

But I must, I dare, describe no more. I shall not say what I saw in that

general receptacle of the day of horror--the range of low biers which

lay surrounding the scaffold, now the last resting-place of men who had

but a few hours before flourished in the full possession of every

faculty of our being; and, still more, with all those faculties in the

full ardour of public life--with brilliant ambition to stimulate, with

prospects of boundless power to reward, and with that most exhilarating

and tempting spell of human existence, popular acclamation, resounding

in their ears. I had known some of them, I had seen then all; and now I

saw those highly gifted, vigorously practised, and fiery-souled men,

shaken down in an instant like a shock of corn; swept to death as if

they were but so many weeds; extinguished in a moment, and in another

moment flung aside, a heap of clay, to make room for other dead. And

this was Republicanism--this the reign of knowledge, the triumph of

freedom, the glory of political regeneration! Even in that most trying

moment, when I saw the waggon, in which I remained the last survivor but

one, give up my unfortunate companion to the executioner, my parting

words to him, as I shook his cold hand, were--"Better the forest and the

savage than republicanism! Doubly cursed be murder, when it takes the

name of freedom!"

I then resolved to see and hear no more; gave a brief and still a fond

recollection to England; and, committing my spirit to a still higher

care, I bowed my forehead on my hands, like one laying down his head for

the final blow!

But while I was still thus absorbed I heard a sudden shout, the

trampling of cavalry, and the sound of trumpets. I again raised my eyes.

A strong body of French troopers, covered with the dust of the

high-road, and evidently exhausted by a long journey, were passing along

the _quai_ which bordered the scene of execution. In the midst of these

squadrons were seen Austrian standards surmounted by the tricolor, and

evidently carried as trophies. The rumour now ran quickly through the

spectators, that Flanders had been entered, that the enemy had been

routed, and that a column of Austrian prisoners was passing through the

streets, of which those squadrons formed the escort.

What could now detain the multitude? The public curiosity would probably

have defied grape-shot; with one burst they poured from the square. When

the populace went, why should the National Guard stay behind?--were they

not as much entitled to satisfy their curiosity? Three-fourths of the

guard instantly piled their muskets, leaving them in care of their less

zealous or more lazy fellow warriors, and ran after the multitude. The

executioners were like other men; equally touched by their "country's

glory," and fond of a spectacle. They dropped by twos and threes quietly

from the sides of the scaffold, and made their way to the _quai_. In the

mean time I was left disregarded; but I was still fettered, or I should

have jumped from the waggon, and taken my chance for escape. All had

evidently come to a full stop, and even that horrible machine, above my

head, had ceased to clank and crush; for what is a spectacle in France

without an audience? The chief headsman, with two or three of his

assistants, true to their post, alone remained--waiting for the return

of the people; yet even they cast many a lingering glance towards the

pageant, whose plumes, flags, and kettledrums, passing across the

entrance of the square, made their patriotism more difficult from minute

to minute. At length the trumpets died away, and, to my renewed

despondency, I saw the crowd again thicken towards me and the few

remaining vehicles, which that day, now sinking into twilight, was to

empty of their victims.

But I was again respited. While I awaited the summons to mount the fatal

steps, a party of dragoons rode into the square, seized every waggon

without a moment's delay, and ordered the whole to be driven out for the

reception of a column of wounded, both French and Austrians; who, having

been brought to the city gates, now waited the means of transport to the

great military hospital at Vincennes.

In this country of expedients, the first suggestion is always the best.

The colonel of dragoons in charge of the column, had applied to the

government for the means of carriage; they referred him to the

municipality, who referred him to the staff of the National Guard; who

referred him to the subprefect; who referred him to his subordinate

functionaries; who knew nothing on the subject; until the colonel,

indignant at the impertinences of office, accidentally heard that the

requisite conveyances were to be seen in front of the Hotel de Ville.

Regarding it as the natural right of the soldier to be first served in

all cases, he sent off a squadron at full speed to make his seizure.

Nothing could be more complete. The affair was settled at once. The

remonstrances of the civil officers against our being thus withdrawn

from their grasp, were answered by bursts of laughter at their

impudence, and blows with the flat of the sabre for their presumption;

for, next to the open reprobation of the army for the civic cruelties,

was their scorn of the civic functionaries. The National Guard made some

feeble display of resistance, but soon showed that they had no wish to

try their bayonets against those expert handlers of the sword; and the

event was, that the whole train of fifty or sixty waggons, of which

about a tenth remained full, were hurried away at full gallop down to

the Boulevard, leaving the scaffold a sinecure. At the barrier a new

arrangement took place; the wounded were piled into the carriages along

with us, and the whole were marched under escort to the grand depot of

the garrison of Paris.

I had seen Vincennes before, and under trying circumstances; its

frowning physiognomy had not been altered, nor, as a prison, was it more

congenial to my feelings than before. Yet, on hearing the hollow tread

of our horses' feet over its drawbridge, and seeing myself actually

within its massive walls, I experienced a feeling of satisfaction which

I had never expected to enjoy within bolts and bars. In this world

contrast is every thing. I had been so fevered with alternate peril and

escape, so sick of doubt, and so perplexed with the thousand miseries of

flight; that, to find myself secure from casualty for the next

twenty-four hours, and relieved from the trouble of thinking for myself,

or thinking of any thing, was a relief which amounted almost to a

pleasure. I never laid myself down to sleep with greater thankfulness,

than when, stretched on the wooden guard-bed of the barrack-room, where

the whole crowd of prisoners were packed together, I listened to the

beat of the night-drum and the changing of the guard. They told me that,

for once at least, I might sleep without a police-officer, to bid me,

like Master Barnardine, "arise and be hanged."

Time in a garrison is the most lingering of all conceivable things,

except time in a prison. I had it, loaded with the double weight. There

was no resource to be found in the fractured and bandaged portion of

human nature round me. The Austrians were brave boors, who spoke nothing

but Styrian or Carinthian, or some border dialect, which nothing but

barbarism had ever heard of, and which nothing but Austrian organs could

have ever pronounced. The French recruits were from provinces which had

their own "beloved patois," and which, to the Parisian, held nearly the

same rank of civilized respect as the Kingdom of Ashantee. Besides, it

was to be remembered, that all round me was a scene of suffering--the

dismal epilogue of a field of battle; or rather the dropping of the

curtain on the royal stage, when the glitter and the noise were gone by,

and the actors reduced from their pomps and vanities, and sent home to

the shivering necessities of poor human existence.

Life to me was now as stagnant as the ditch round the fortress; all

feeling was as languid as the heavy air of our casemates. The mind lost

all curiosity relative to the external world; and, beyond the casual

knowledge which dropped, with all official mystery, from the lips of our

worthy governor, and which told us that the war still continued, and

that the armies of the Republic were "invincible beyond all power of

human resistance;" we could not have been much more separated from

sympathy, even with the capital itself, if we had been transported to

one of the belts of Jupiter.

But a new alarm now seized me. The extreme indifference with which I had

begun to regard all things, at length struck the eye of one of the

military surgeons, who had been sent from Paris in consequence of the

influx of prisoners. He seemed to take some interest in my consumptive

visage and lack-lustre eye; asked me whether "some of my family had not

died early in life," and offered to dictate my pursuits and regimen. The

French are by nature a kindly people, with this one proviso, that,

though every Frenchman on earth is more or less a _persifleur_, you must

never practise the art upon himself. M. Rossignol Perigord Pantoufle

would have been an incomparable subject for the exercise, for he was

eccentricity from top to toe. But the state of my spirits prevented my

taking any share in the burlesque which too frequently befell this

worthy person; and he attached himself to me as a sort of refuge from

the sly, but stinging, persecution of his fellow-officers. When the

hen-wife plucks the goose's bosom it makes her nestle more closely to

her goslings. It was the calamity of my friend Pantoufle to be born with

what the novelists call a "too feeling heart;" he was always in love

with some one or another, and always jilted. But misfortune was thrown

away upon him; he was still a complete sensitive plant, shivering and

shrinking at every new touch: a dish of _blancmange_ could not have

shaken with a slighter impulse, nor a shape of jelly more easily

dissolved. He was now past fifty; and, never much indebted to nature in

his youth, time, the foe to beauty, had been more than a foe to the

doctor. I never recollect to have seen a figure or physiognomy less

fitted to disturb the female soul. But he made me the confidant of his

woes; and if I did not, like Desdemona, "to him seriously incline," at

least I never laughed, amusing as were his agonies, and diverting as was

his despair. I had either the presence of mind, or the feebleness of

pulse, to look and listen;--the art has succeeded in higher places than

prisons.

Yet all was not sentimentality with him. He was an honest and

high-spirited man in the main. He questioned me--and no question could

then be a bolder one at the time--in what manner he could best serve me.

My answer was immediate--"Find out the commercial house of Elnathan, and

tell the head of the family that I am here." The service was done, and I

received for answer, on my friend's return from his ride to the Rue

Vivienne--"That the firm kept no account with any person of my name; and

that they had no desire to have any further application on the subject."

The doctor, too, had been received with such gathering of black brows,

and such murmurs between indignation and astonishment; that if Rabbi

Elnathan had not been deemed altogether beneath the vengeance of "an

officer in the service of the Republic," the consequence would have been

a proposal to choose his own time to be run through the body in the

Champs Elysees.

It was late when my ambassador had returned, and I had begun to feel

some alarm for his peril by other than the shafts of Cupid in the

rashness of exposing him to the jealous eye of his government, or

perhaps to the denunciation of the Jewish firm, who, to screen

themselves, might hasten with the intelligence to the first

police-office. And I had an uneasy walk of a couple of hours, gazing

from the ramparts, for every movement in the direction of the capital.

The night was calm, and the glow of the lamps in the streets strikingly

marked their outline; when on a sudden the sky was filled with flame of

every colour, shot up in all directions, the cannon round the barriers

began to roar, and Montmartre was in a perpetual blaze. It was plain

that some extraordinary event had occurred; but whether this were the

fall of the triumvirate or of their enemies, a new revolution or a new

monarch, was beyond our knowledge; we were all hermetically sealed up in

Vincennes; and if Paris had been buried in its own catacombs at the

moment, the news would have been doled out to us only in the segments

which suited the dignity of the governor.

But Pantoufle for once was popular in the fortress. If he had brought

nothing to raise my spirits, his tidings threw the garrison into

ecstasy. The Republic "had gained a great victory," whose value was

enhanced by the previous disasters of the campaign. The favourite of the

French armies, too, had gained that victory. This was another feature of

the rejoicing. Dumourier was one of the people; "no noble, no

aristocrat, no son of landed wealth, no lord of forests and feeder on

privileges." He had been a simple captain of engineers; he was now

conqueror of those Austrian provinces on which France had cast an eager

eye for centuries. That prize, which all the monarchs of France, with

all their titled marshals, had never been able to seize, "the Republic,

with a republican army and a republican general, had won in the first

month of her first invasion."

The garrison, of course, had its fireworks, its salute from the

ramparts, and its _feu de joie_. But, in the midst of the festivity, I

observed Pantoufle's countenance loaded with some mighty secret. He

broke it to me with the air of a man revealing a conspiracy. Taking me

on one side, while the ramparts were blazing with blue-lights, and every

man, woman, and child of the garrison were chattering, huzzaing, and

waltzing round us; he communicated to me the solemn fact, that his heart

had been pierced again. This execution had been done while he was

waiting in Elnathan's counting-house: a young Rachel or Rebecca had

accidentally glanced across his sight, with such inimitable eyes, that

his fate was decided for life. The world was valueless without her; and

my particular advice was requested as to the way in which he was to make

his approaches. I advised a sonnet. He smiled, and acknowledged that he

had anticipated my advice, and had spent an hour of that twilight, dear

to love and the muses, during which he had kept me in all the

discomforts of suspense, devoting all the energies of his soul to the

composition of a song to the beauties of the irresistible Israelite.

Boileau has told the world, that a poet once insisted on his listening

to an ode of his composition, while they were kneeling together at high

mass. Our situation might not be quite as solemn, but the doctor was

quite as pressing; and seated on the corner of a bastion, while the guns

were roaring above our heads, I listened to an effusion in the most

established style of sexagenarian poetry.

"Rachel est sans desirs,

C'est un bouton de rose,

Que la nature arrose,

Et dispose a s'ouvrir.

Dans son cour sans detour,

Il n'est pas jour encore;

Il attend pour eclore

Un rayon de l'amour!"

I listened without a laugh, and won the eternal gratitude of the writer.

Nothing could be clearer than that, whatever the effusion might owe to

the inspiration of Cupid, Apollo had no share in its charm. On my part,

it would probably have been an act of the truest friendship, to have bid

him burn his tablets, forswear poetry for ever, and regard himself as

forbidden the temptations of the maids of Parnassus. But I should have

broken his heart. I took the simpler but more effectual cure--I bade him

find out this idol, and marry her. Before I forget him and his sorrows,

let me mention, that he took my advice, and that, on my return to the

Continent some years after, I found the poet transferred into the

benedict, with a pretty wife at his side, and a circle of lively

children at his knee--an active, thriving, and rational member of the

community. I always quote the doctor, for the superiority of the

soothing system. The vinegar of criticism would have festered the wounds

of his vanity; the art of (must I call it) flattery healed them. It left

a scar, I acknowledge; for the doctor still wrote verses, and still had

a lurking propensity for climbing the slippery slope of poetic renown.

But the realities of life are fortunate correctives to this passion,

and, like Piron, luckily

"Il ne fut rien

Pas meme academician."

But on this night our "intercourse of souls" was interrupted by one of

those painful evidences of the renewal of hostilities which shows war in

its truest aspect. A long column of vehicles, which we had seen moving

for some time across the plain, and whose movement, by the torches of

the escort, looked from the ramparts like the trailing of an immense

phosphoric serpent, approached the gates. The announcement was soon made

that it was a large detachment of prisoners and wounded, who had arrived

from the desperate but decisive battle in Flanders. All the medical

officers of the garrison were immediately in requisition; and the sights

which I saw, even when standing at the gate, as the carts and cars

rolled over the drawbridge, were sufficient to startle feelings more

used to such terrible demonstrations of the folly or the frenzy of the

world. But this was no time to indulge indolent sensibilities. Of

course, I have no desire to enter into the startling details of that

spectacle. But mastering myself so far, as to volunteer my attendance

for the time in the hospital, the thought often occurred to me, that

there could be no better lesson for the love of conquest than a walk

through a military hospital after the first battle.

This anxious service lasted during the greater part of the night; for

the wounded amounted to little less than a thousand, both French and

foreign. But as I was returning to my mattress, I recollected the

countenance of a prisoner standing at the door of one of the chambers

set apart for officers of the higher rank. The man put his hand to his

shako, and addressed me in German;--he was one of the squadron of Hulans

whom I had commanded in the Prussian retreat, and who had rejoined his

regiment after the skirmish with the French dragoons. He expressed great

delight in finding that I was a survivor. But "on whom was he now in

attendance?" "On Major-General Count Varnhorst." He told me that the

general had volunteered to join the Austrian army in the Netherlands,

and taking the Hulan with him, had been wounded in covering the retreat,

been found on the field, and was now in the hands of the surgeons in

that chamber!

I pass briefly over this scene. I found my brave friend apparently at

the point of death; he had been wounded by the sabre, trampled under

horses' hoofs, and crushed in every imaginable way, in the course of the

desperate defence which he made against an overwhelming force of the

enemy's cavalry. The officers of the escort were loud in reports of his

almost frantic gallantry; but he was now so exhausted by the length of

the march as to be almost insensible: he knew no one; and his case,

after a day or two, was pronounced beyond all cure. It was then that I

obtained permission to watch over him, and at least provide that he

should not be disturbed in his closing hours. Care is often more than

science, and care succeeded in this instance, against all the ominous

looks of the medical staff. I so much delighted Pantoufle, by having

thus overthrown the authority of a pragmatical _confrere_, who had been

peculiarly stern in his prognostics; that he made the proposal to me of

joining him in the chances of his profession. "I shall fix myself in

Paris," said he; "fame will be the inevitable consequence, and fortune

will follow; here you shall be my successor." I fought off the prospect

as well as I could, and pleaded my want of professional knowledge. His

countenance, at the words, would have been an incomparable study of

mingled burlesque and scorn. He instanced a whole crowd of leading men,

whom he unceremoniously designated as having made fortunes, not by

knowledge, but simply by its absence. "Their ignorance," said he, "gives

them effrontery, and effrontery is the grand secret of fame. You are an

Englishman and a philosopher,"--the latter expression uttered with a

curl of the lip and an elevation of the brow, which evidently translated

the word, a fool. "You take things circuitously, while success lies in

the straight line; thus you fail, we triumph."

I admitted the rapidity of his countrymen.

"In France," said he, or rather exclaimed, "two things conduct to

renown; and but two--to stop at nothing, and never to admit ignorance in

any thing; in medicine, to cure or kill without delay; in surgery, to

operate at all risks. If the patient dies, there are fifty reasons for

it; if the surgeon hesitates, the public will allow of but one. Politics

are not within my line, and the subject is just now a delicate one; but

you see that the secret of renown is, to run on the edge of the

scaffold. In soldiership the principle is the same--always to fight,

whenever you can find any body to fight with; you will deserve to be

famous, or deserve to be guillotined.'

"Perhaps both," I remarked.

"Nothing more probable. But still something is done; inaction does

nothing. Look at Dumourier; he has had no more necessity for fighting

this battle, than for jumping from the parapet of Notre-Dame. But he has

fought, he has conquered; and, instead of throwing himself from the

parapet of Notre-Dame, which he probably would have done in the next

fortnight's _ennui_ in Paris, all Paris is placarded with his

bulletins."

"But he _might_ have been beaten; he might have been ruined, or brought

to trial for rashness; or to an Austrian prison, like La Fayette."

"Of course he might. But the question is of the fact--let prophets deal

with the future. He _has_ beaten the Austrians; he _has_ conquered

Flanders; he _has_ made himself the first man of France by the act, for

which, if he had been an Austrian general, he would have been brought to

a court-martial, his victory pronounced contrary to rule, his bravery a

breach of etiquette, and the rest of his days, if he was not shot on the

ramparts of Vienna, spent in a dungeon in Prague. Take my advice; dash

at every thing; risk is the grand talent--adventure, the philosopher's

stone. So, listen to me; you shall be admitted to the Hotel Dieu as an

_eleve_; become my assistant, and make your fortune."

I stared at this sudden explosion of the doctor's rhetoric; but I should

have remembered, that he was under the double inspiration of new-born

love and reluctant rhyme.

Varnhorst at length attempted to walk as far as the ramparts, and I was

enjoying the pride of being able to exhibit my patient to the garrison;

when, just as we were issuing from the long and chill corridors into the

fresh air and sunshine, I observed the commandant coming towards me with

a peculiar air of gravity, attended by several of his officers. Bowing

to Varnhorst with military etiquette, he took him aside and communicated

to him a few words, which made his pale countenance look paler still.

"My friend is brave," was the Prussian's reply, turning a glance to

where I stood. "I have seen him in the field. I am satisfied that,

wherever he is, he will do his duty."

The commandant now walked up to me, and with an air of embarrassment put

a sealed letter into my hands. It was from the minister of foreign

affairs, and was marked _secret and immediate_. I opened it, and I shall

not say with what feelings I saw--an order for my attendance at the

office of the minister, signed ROBESPIERRE.

If the grim majesty of death had put his signature in person to this

order, it would not have borne a more mortal aspect. It was a pang! yet

the pang did not continue long. Inevitable things are not the hardest to

be borne. At all events, there was no time for pondering on the subject.

The carriage which had brought the order and the government _huissier_,

was at the gate. Varnhorst gave me one grasp of his honest hand as I

left him; the commandant wished me "good fortune." I hurried into the

carriage, and we flew on the road to Paris.

On reaching the barrier, we turned off to the quarter of the Luxembourg,

and stopped at the gate of a moderate-sized house, where my conductor

and I entered. I was shown into a small and simple room; where I found a

man advanced in years, and of a striking aspect. He said not a word; I

had no inclination to speak. The one or two hesitating syllables which I

addressed to him were answered only by a bow and a look, as if he did

not understand the language; and I awaited the approach of the terror of

France, the horror of Europe, during half an hour, which seemed to me

interminable. The door at last opened, a valet came in, and the name of

"Robespierre" thrilled through every fibre; but, instead of the frowning

giant to which my fancy had involuntarily attached the name, I saw a

slight figure, highly dressed, and even with the air of a fop on the

stage. Holding a perfumed handkerchief in one hand, which he waved

towards his face like one indulging in the fragrance, and a diamond

snuff-box in the other, he advanced with a sliding step; and after a

sallow smile to me, and a solemn bow to the old man, congratulated

himself on the "honour of the acquaintance, which he had been indebted

to his friend Elnathan for making, in my person." I was all

astonishment: I had come in expectation of receiving my death-warrant--I

had a reception like an ambassador. I now perplexed myself with the

idea, that I had been mistaken for some stranger in the foreign

diplomacy; but I was instantly set right by his pronouncing my name, and

making some allusions to "the influence of my family in the British

Parliament."

Yet, I was still in the tiger's den, and I expected to feel the talons.

I was happily disappointed; the claw was sheathed in velvet. A slight

refection was brought in by an embroidered domestic, and it was

evidently the wish of this tremendous demagogue to appear the man of

refinement, at least in my instance.

"My friend Elnathan," said he, "has informed me that you wish to return

to England?"

This was pronounced in the meekest tone of interrogatory; and, with eyes

scarcely raised to either of us, he awaited my confirmation of his idea.

It was given unhesitatingly; and my glance at the countenance of the old

man was answered by another, which told me that I saw the correspondent

of my friend Mordecai.

"The circumstances are simply these," said the dictator in the same

delicate tone; "the government has occasion to arrange some matters of

importance with the British cabinet. The successes of the Republic have

raised jealousies, which it is for the advantage of human nature that we

should reconcile if possible. France and England are the only free

countries: their hostility can only be injurious to freedom."

He paused, and his cold grey eye, after traversing the floor, was slowly

raised to me.

I admitted my perfect agreement in the opinion, that "wherever national

conflict could be avoided, it was the business of all rational men to

maintain peace." I saw a grim smile pass over his sallow features,

probably at having found another dupe. Elnathan sat in profound silence,

without a muscle moved.

Robespierre, rising, took from a portfolio a letter, and put it into the

Jew's hand. He now had got over that strange embarrassment with which

his habitual nervousness had marked his first address, and spoke

largely, and with a considerable expression of authority.

"The English government," said he, "have expressed some unnecessary

uneasiness at the progress of opinion in Europe. The late victory, which

has decided the fate of the Austrian Netherlands, will probably increase

that uneasiness. Communications through the usual channels are slow,

imperfect, and open to espionage on all sides. I have, therefore,

applied to my friend Elnathan to point out some individual in whom he

has perfect confidence, and through whom the communication can be made.

He has named you."

Elnathan, with his huge hands clasped on his breast, and his bushy brows

drawn deep over his eyes, bent forward with almost oriental affirmation.

"When will you be ready to set out for Calais?"

"This moment," was my willing answer.

"No, we are not quite prepared." He walked for a while about the room,

pondering on the subject; then, turning to Elnathan, he directed the Jew

to get ready some papers connected with the financial dealings which his

English brethren were then beginning to carry on extensively throughout

Europe. Those were to be arranged by next day, and for those I must

wait.

"You shall be under the care of Elnathan," said the master of my fate.

"He will obtain your passports from the Foreign Office, and you will

leave Paris to-morrow evening at furthest. We must avoid all suspicion,

Elnathan," said he, turning to the Jew. "Paris is a hot-bed of spies.

Apropos, where do you propose to spend the evening?"

My mind glanced at Vincennes, and his eye, cold as it was, caught my

startled conception.

"No, your return to-night to the fortress would only set all the tongues

of Paris in motion to-morrow. You must be seen in public to-night, at

the opera, the theatre, or where you will. You must figure as an

Englishman travelling at his pleasure and his leisure--_a Milor_."

"Madame Roland gives a soiree to-night," humbly interposed the Jew.

"Ha!--that is the best of all. You must go there. You will be seen by

all the world. Elnathan will introduce you to the 'philosophic lady' of

the circle." He then resumed his pacing round the room. I could observe

the vulpine expression of his visage, the twitching of his hands, the

keen sidelong look of a man living in perpetual alarm. We prepared to

take our leave; but he now suddenly resumed the _petit-maitre_,

flourished his perfumed handkerchief again, gave a passing smile at the

mirror, and offered me the honours of his snuff-box with the affectation

of the stage. But, as we reached the door of the apartment, he made a

long, single stride, which brought him up close to me. "Remember, sir,"

said he, in a stern voice, wholly unlike the past--"You have it in

charge from me to inform the government of your country of the actual

feeling of France. It is true that there are madmen among

us--Brissotins, Girondists, and other enthusiasts--who talk of war. I

tell you that they _are_ madmen, and that _I_ will have no war.--There

may be conspirators, who think to shake the existing _regime_ of the

republic, and look to war as the means of raising themselves on its

ruins.--_I_ tell you, and you may tell your cabinet, that they will not

accomplish their objects here; and that, if they accomplish them, it

will be the fault and the folly alone of England. Impress those truths

on the minds of your countrymen: the Republic desires no war; her

principle is peace, her purpose is peace, her prosperity is peace. There

will be, there shall be, there _can_ be, no war." He folded his arms,

and stood like a pillar till we withdrew.

I happened to ascertain shortly afterwards, that on this very day

Robespierre had presided at a council which has sent off orders to

Dumourier to open the Scheldt, the notorious and direct preliminary to

war with England. Such is the sincerity of diplomacy!

I remained during the rest of the day with Elnathan. His hotel was

splendid, and all that surrounded him gave the impression of great

opulence; but it was obvious that he lived like a man in a gunpowder

magazine. He had several sons and daughters, whom, in the terrors of the

time, he had contrived to send among his connexions in Germany; and he

now lived alone, his wife having been dead for some years. All his

wealth could not console him for the anxiety of his position; and

doubtless he would have perished long before, in the general massacre of

the opulent, except for the circumstance of being the chief channel of

moneyed communication between the government and Germany. In the course

of our lonely but most _recherche_ dinner, he explained to me slightly

the means of my recent preservation. The police-officer had acquainted

him with my being the bearer of a letter from Mordecai. The intelligence

reached him just in time to save me, by a daring claim of my person as

an agent of the English ministry. He had then lost sight of me, and

began to think that I had perished; when the application of my friend

the doctor told him where I was to be found. The message of the head of

the Republic, requiring a confidential bearer of documents, struck him

as affording an opportunity of my liberation; and though the palpable

absurdity of my worthy friend Pantoufle prevented any communication with

_him_, no time was lost in proposing my name to authority.

"And now," said my entertainer, after drinking my safe arrival in a

bumper of imperial tokay, "En avance, for Madame Roland."

We drove to a splendid mansion in the Rue de la Revolution. The street

in front was crowded with equipages, and it was with some difficulty

that we could make our way through the long and stately suite of rooms.

The house had belonged to the Austrian ambassador; and on the

declaration of war it had been taken possession of by the Republic

without ceremony.

I observed to Elnathan, that "to judge from the pomp of the furniture,

republicanism was not republican every where."

"Nowhere but in the streets, or the prisons," was his reply in a

whisper. "Since the Austrian left it, the whole hotel has been furnished

anew at the most profuse expense, which I had the honour of supplying.

Roland is a great personage, an honest nobody, a mill-horse at the wheel

of office. He is probably drudging over his desk at this moment; but

Madame is of another mould. "La voila!" He turned suddenly, and made a

profound bow to a very showy female, who had advanced from a group for

the purpose of receiving the Jew and the stranger. I had now, for the

first time, the honour of seeing this remarkable personage. Her figure

was certainly striking, and her physiognomy conveyed a great deal of

her character for intelligence and decision. She had evidently dressed

herself on the model of the _classique_; and though not handsome enough

for a Venus, nor light enough for a nymph, she might have made a

tolerable Minerva. She had probably some thoughts of the kind; for

before we had time to make our bows, she threw herself into an attitude

of the Galerie des Antiques, and, with her eyes fixed profoundly on the

ground, awaited our incense. But when this part was played, the idol

condescended to become human, and she spoke with that torrent of

language which her clever countrywomen have at unrivaled command. She

was "delighted, charmed, enchanted, to make my acquaintance. She had

owed many marks of friendship to M. Elnathan; but this surpassed them

all--she admired the English--they were always the friends of

liberty--France was now beginning a race in the arena of freedom. The

rivalry was brilliant, the prize was inestimable." I could only bow.

Again, "she was enraptured to see an Englishman; the countryman of

Milton and Wilkes, of Charles Fox and William Tell--she had been lately

studying English history, and had wept floods of tears over the

execution of William III.--_Enfin_, she hoped that Shakspeare, 'ce beau,

ce superbe Shakspeare,' was in good health, and meant to give the world

many, many more charming tragedies."

She had now discharged her first volley, and she wheeled back upon a

group of members of the Convention, grim and sullen-looking sages, with

wild hair hanging over their shoulders, and the genuine Carmagnole

physiognomy. With those men she was evidently plunged in vehement

discussion, and her whole volume of politics was flung at their heads

with as little mercy as her literary stores had been poured upon me.

But the crowd pressed towards another object of curiosity, and I

followed it, under the guidance of my Asmodeus, to a music room,

splendidly fitted up, and filled with the most select orchestra of the

capital. But it was an amateur that was there to attract all eyes and

ears. "Madame de Fontenai," whispered the Jew, as he glanced towards a

woman of a remarkably expressive countenance and statue-like form, half

sitting, half reposing, on a sofa--surrounded by a group soliciting her

for a "few notes, a suspiration, a _soupcon_"--of, as Elnathan observed,

"one of the most delicious voices which had ever crossed the Pyrenees,"

and the Jew had all the habitual connoisseurship of his nation. At last

the siren consented, and a harp was brought and placed before her, with

the same homage which might have attended an offering to the Queen of

Cyprus, in her own island, three thousand years ago; and rather letting

her hand drop among the strings, than striking them, and rather

breathing out her feelings, than performing any music of mortal

composition, she sang one of the fantastic, but deep, reveries of

passion of "the sweet south."

SARABANDA.

"Tus ojos y los mios

Se miran y hablan.

Pero los Corazones

No se declaran.

Mas te prevengo

Que si tu no te explicas,

Yo no te entiendo.

"Las dudas de un amante

No han de saberse,

Que al decirlas se sabe.

Que desmerecen.

No--en el silencio

No son pensamientos

D'el mas aprecio."[14]

The song closed in a burst of plaudits, as general and marked as if they

had been given to a _prima donna_ in a theater, and she received them as

if she was in a theatre.

"You should be presented to Madame de Fontenai," was my guide's

suggestion. "She is our reigning _celebrite_ at present, as Madame

Roland is our _publicite_. You see we are nice in our distinctions.--I

shall probably to-night show you another, a very handsome creature

indeed, without half the talents of either, but with more admirers than

both; who has obtained the title of our _felicite_."

"I shall be delighted to be made known to her, but give me the _carte du

pays_. Who or what is she?"

"The daughter of Cabarus, the Spanish ambassador here some years ago.

She is now a widow, rich, giving the most _recherche_ suppers, followed

by all the world, and, as she declares, _persecuted_ by M. Tallien; who,

as perseverance is nine-tenths of success in every thing, will probably

succeed in making her Madame Tallien."

I had now the honor of being presented, and was received with very

flattering attention. This I probably owed to the Jew, who seemed to

have the key to every one's smiles, as he had to most of their

escrutoires. She was certainly a person of most distinguished

appearance. Not handsome, so far as beauty depends on feature; for she

had the olive tinge of her country, Spain, and she had the _not_ Spanish

"petit nez retrousse." She required distance for fascination. But her

figure was fine, and never was any costume more studied to exhibit it in

all its graces. Accustomed as I had become to foreign life, I must

acknowledge that I was a little surprised at the unhesitatingly

_classical_ development of her form;--arms naked to the shoulder, or

clasped only with golden serpents; a robe _a la Diane_, and succinct as

ever huntress wore; silver sandals, a jeweled cestus, and a tunic of

white satin deeply embroidered with gold, depending simply to the knee!

But when she placed me on the sofa beside her, and entered into

conversation, every thing was forgotten but her incomparable elegance of

manner. She had singular brilliancy of eye; it almost spoke, it

perpetually flashed, and it filled up the pauses when she ceased to

speak, with a meaning absolutely mental. Her language was animated and

intelligent; sometimes in a tone of gentle and touching confidence,

which made the hearer almost think that he was looking at her soul

through her vivid countenance. Before a few minutes had elapsed, I could

fully comprehend her title to the renown of the most captivating

conversationist of Paris.

As I at length relinquished this enviable and envied position, to give

way to the crowd who brought their tribute to the _fateuil_, or rather

the shrine, of this dazzling woman--"You have still," said my companion,

"to see another of our sovereigns; for, as we have a triumvirate in the

Tuileries, the world of taste is ruled by three rivals; and they are

curiously characteristic of the classes from which they have sprung. The

lady of the mansion, you must have perceived to be republican in every

sense of the word--clever undoubtedly, but as undoubtedly bourgeoise;

intelligent in no slight degree, but too much in earnest for elegance;

perpetually taking the lead on those desperate subjects, in which women

can only be, and ought to be, smatterers; and all this to the infinite

amusement of her hearers, and the unbounded terror of her meek and very

helpless husband."

I remarked, "that she had, at least, the important merit of giving very

splendid entertainments."

"Yes, and of also possessing as honest a heart as she possesses a rash

brain. She is kind, generous, and even rational, where she has not a

revolution to make or to ruin. But, suffer her to touch on politics, and

you might as well bring a lunatic into the full moon."

"But that singular being, to whom we have just been listening, and whose

song I shall hear to-night in my dreams--can she be a politician, a

republican? I have never seen a countenance more likely to be

contemptuous of the _canaille_!"

"You are perfectly in the right. She has a sphere of her own, which has

no more to do with our world than if she lived in the evening-star. She

exists simply to enjoy homage, and to reward it, as you have seen, by a

song or a smile; yet she has been on the verge of the scaffold. Some of

our most powerful political characters are contending for her influence,

her fortune, or her hand; and whether the contest will end in raising M.

Tallien to the head of the Republic, or extinguishing him within the

week, is a question which chance alone can decide.--She may yet be a

queen."

"She seems fitter to be a Circe, or a Calypso. Or if a queen, she would

be a Cleopatra."

"No," said Elnathan, with the only laugh which I had seen on his solemn

visage during the night. "She has known too much of courts to endure

royalty. She reigns as the widow of M. de Fontenai. If Tallien falls,

she will have the power of choosing from all his successors. When old

age comes at last, and conquests are hopeless, she will turn _devote_,

fly to her native Spain, abjure the face of man, spend her money on

wax-dolls and cockle-shells; and after being worshipped by the multitude

as a saint, and panegyrized by the monks as a miracle, will die with her

face turned to Paris after all, as good Mussulmen send their last breath

in the direction of Mecca."

We now plunged into the centre of a circle of men in military costume,

full of the war, and criticising Dumourier's campaign with the utmost

severity. As I listened; with some surprise at the multiplicity of

errors which the most successful general of France had contrived to

squeeze into a single month of operations, I observed a man, of a pale

thin visage, like one suffering from ill health or excessive mental

toil, but of a singularly intellectual expression; standing at a slight

distance from the group of tacticians with a quiet smile.

"Let me have the honour of presenting M. Marston to the minister at

war," was my introduction to the celebrated Carnot; with whom Elnathan

seemed to be on peculiar terms of intimacy. The minister entered at

once, and good-humouredly, into conversation.

"You must not think our favourite general," said he, "altogether the

military novice which those gentlemen of the National Guard have decided

him to be. I feel an additional interest in the question, because I had

a little official battle to fight to place him at the head of the army

of Flanders. But I saw that he had military talent, and that, with a

republic, cancels all sins."

I made some passing remark on the idleness of disputing the ability of

an officer who answered cavils by conquest, observing, that the only

rational altar raised by the Romans, a people of warriors, was to "Good

Fortune."

"Ah yes, you think, in the Choiseul style, that the first question to be

asked in choosing a general was, 'is he lucky?' I must own,

notwithstanding, that our city warriors have been of the opinion"--and a

slight movement curled his lip--"that General Dumourier has fought his

battle against principle. But they do not perceive, that _there_ lies

the very merit for which the Republic must uphold him. His troops were

in an exhausted country; they had but provisions for two days. He must

fight at once or retreat. Another general might have retreated; and made

his apology by the state of his haversacks. Dumourier took the other

alternative: he fought; and the general who fights is the only general

who gains victories."

One of the tacticians at whom he had indulged in a sneer, Santerre, the

commandant of the city horse, a huge and heavy hero with enormous

jackboots and a clattering sabre, now strode up to us, and pronounced

that the campaign had been hitherto "against all rule."

"You mistake, my good friend," said the now half-angry minister--"you

mistake acting above rule for acting against rule. Our war is new, our

force is new, our position is new; and we must meet the struggle by new

means every where. Follow the routine, and all is lost. Invent, act,

hazard, strike, and we shall triumph as Dumourier has done--France is

surrounded with enemies. To conquer, we must astonish. If we wait to be

attacked, we must feel the weakness of defence--the spirit of the French

soldier is attack. Within the frontier he is a bird in a cage; beyond it

he is a bird in the air. Why has France always triumphed in the

beginning of a war? because she has always invaded. The French soldier

must march, he must fight, he must feel that he hazards every thing,

before he rises to that pitch of daring, that ardour, that _elan_, by

which he gains every thing. Let him, like the Greek, burn his ships

behind him, and from that moment he is invincible."

I listened with speechless interest to this development of the

principles on which the great war of Europe was to be sustained. The

speaker uttered his oracular sentences with a glow, which left his

hearers almost as breathless as himself. I could imagine that I saw

before me the living genius of French victory.

While we were standing, silenced by this burst; an incident occurred, as

if to give demonstration to his theory; an aide-de-camp entered the

room, bringing despatches from the army of Flanders. He had but just

arrived in Paris, and not finding the war-minister at his bureau, had

followed him here. Of course, the strongest conceivable curiosity

existed; but not a syllable was to be learned from the official mystery

of the aide-de-camp. He made his advance to the minister, deposited the

despatch in his hands, and then drew up his stately figure, impervious

to all questioning. Carnot retired to an alcove to read the missive, and

in the mean time the general anxiety was an absolute fever. The dance

ceased, the tables of loto and faro were deserted, the whole business of

life was broken up, and five hundred of the handsomest, the most

brilliant, and the best dressed of the earth, were standing on tiptoe in

an agony of suspense. It would have justified a counter-revolution.

At length Carnot, probably wholly forgetting the scene of suffering

which he had left behind, came forward with the important despatch open

in his hand. When he read the date, and pronounced the words

"Headquarters, Brussels," all was known, and all was rapture. The French

deserve good news beyond all other people of the globe, for none ever

enjoy it so much. I thought that they would have embraced the little

minister to death; no living man certainly was ever nearer being pressed

into Elysium. Absolute shouts of _Vive la Republique_! and plaudits from

innumerable pairs of the most delicate hands, echoed through the whole

suite of _salons_. Madame, the lady of the mansion, made a set speech to

him, at the conclusion of which she rushed on him with open arms, and

kissed him on both cheeks, "_Au nom de la Republique_." Even the

ethereal Madame de Fontenai condescended so far to stoop to human

feelings, as to move from her couch, advance, drooping her fine eyes,

and, with her hand on her bosom, like a sultana bend her magnificent

head in silent homage before him. I watched the pantomime of this

matchless creature, with a full acknowledgment of its beauty. A single

word would have impaired it; but she did not utter a syllable. On

retiring, she slowly raised her expressive countenance, fixing her eyes

above, as if she thanked some visionary protector of France for this

crowning triumph; and then, with hands clasped, and step by step, sank

back into the crowd.

Supper was announced, and we were led into a new suite of rooms, filled

with all the luxuries and hospitalities of a most sumptuous

entertainment. Carnot, now doubly popular, was surrounded by the _elite_

of name and beauty. But, whether from the politeness with which even the

Republicans of former rank were desirous of distinguishing themselves

from the _roturier_, or for the purpose of making his opinions known in

that country which had been always the great tribunal of European

opinion, and always will be; he made _me_ sit down at his side.

He now talked largely of continental interest, and continually reverted

to the advantages of a closer alliance of England with France. "The two

countries," said he, "are made for combination; combined, they could

conquer the globe; France for the empire of the land, England for the

empire of the sea. Nature has divided between them the sceptre of the

world."

I observed that, when the conquest was achieved, the victors, like

Augustus and Antony, might quarrel at last.

"Well, then, even if they did, the combat would finish in a day what it

would have taken centuries of the tardy wars of old times to decide. Six

hours at Pharsalia settled the civil wars of Rome, and pacified the

world for five hundred years."

"But which side would be content to be the beaten one?" I asked.

"Neither," replied a restless, but remarkably broad-foreheaded and

deep-browed personage at the opposite side of the table. "The combat

would be eternal, or must end in mutual ruin. An universal empire would

be beyond the government of man by law, or his control by the sword. I

prefer enlightening the people until they shall want no control."

"But will they buy your lamp?" said Carnot, with a smile.

"At least they have done so pretty extensively, if I am to believe the

public. It was but this day, that I received a notice that there had

been sent forth the hundred thousandth copy of my 'Qu'est ce que le

Tiers Etat.'"

"That was not a lamp, but a firebrand," said a hollow voice at a

distance down the table; which reminded me of the extraordinary orator

whom I had heard in the Jacobin Club. Carnot looked round to discover

this strange accuser, and added, in a loud and stern tone--

"Whether lamp or firebrand, I pronounce to all good Frenchmen that it

was a great gift to France. It was the grammar of a new language, the

language of liberty! It was the sound of a trumpet, the trumpet of

revolution! Still M. de Sieyes," said he, turning to the author of this

celebrated performance, "all things have their time, and yours is not

yet come. I cannot give up the soldier. I am for no tardy movement, when

the country is in peril; the field must be cleared before it can be

cultivated. You must sweep war from your gates, and faction from your

streets, before you can sit down to teach a people. Even then the task

is not easy. To know nothing, or to know something badly, are two kinds

of ignorance which will always tempt the majority of mankind."

"Is there not a third kind of ignorance more dangerous still--that of

knowing more than one _ought_ to know?" interposed another speaker,

whose countenance had already struck me as one of the most problematical

that I had ever seen. His composed yet keen physiognomy, strongly

reminded me of the portraits of the Italian Conclave--some of the

cardinals of Giorgione and Titian; at once subtle and dignified.

Carnot smiled, and said to me in a low tone, "That is a touch at Sieyes.

Those two men never meet without a fencing-match. One of them has been a

bishop, and cannot forgive the loss of his mitre. Sieyes has been

nothing, but intends to be more than a bishop yet--if he can. Talleyrand

and he hate each other with the hatred of rival beauties."

It was evident that Sieyes was stung, though I could not tell how. I saw

his powerful countenance flush to the forehead. But he merely

said--"Pray, Monsieur, what is a vizard?"

All eyes were now directed to the combatants, and a faint laugh ran

round the table. But there was not the slightest appearance of

perturbation in the manner or look of his antagonist, as he answered--

"Monsieur, I shall have the honour to inform you. A vizard is a

contrivance for concealment, whether in silk and pasteboard or in an

inflexible visage--whether in a woman who wants to disguise her

features, or in a man who wants to hide his heart--whether in a

masquerader or an assassin. For example, when I hear a hypocrite talk of

his honesty, an intriguer of his conscience, a renegade of his candour,

and a pensioner of his patriotism, I do not require to look at him--I

say at once, that man wears a vizard." He paused a moment. "This," said

he, "is the vizard in public life. In private, it is the impartiality of

authors to their own performances, the justice of partizans, the

originality of plagiaries, and the principle of _pamphleteers_."

This daring delivery of sentiment hit so many, that it could be resented

by none; for no one could have assailed it without making himself

responsible to the charge. Silence fell upon the table. However, lapses

of this order are not fatal in France, and the topic of the war was too

recent not to press still. Various anecdotes of the gallantry of the

troops were detailed, and the conversation was once more led by the

minister. "These instances of heroism," said he, "show us the spirit

which war, and war alone, can kindle in a people. In peace, the lower

qualities take the lead; in war, the higher--intrepidity, perseverance,

talent, and contempt of difficulties. The man must then be

shown--deception can have no place there. All the stronger qualities of

our nature are called into exercise; the mind grows muscular like the

frame; the spirit glows with the blood; a nobler career of eminence

spreads before the nation, cheered by rewards, at once of a more

splendid rank, and distributed on a loftier principle. We shall no more

have a Pompadour, or a Du Barry, giving governments and marshals'

batons. The character of the nation will become, like its swords, at

once bright, sharp, and solid; the reign of corruption is gone already,

the reign of dupery cannot long survive. France will set an example

which the world will be proud to imitate, or must be forced to follow."

"You remind me, Monsieur le Ministre, of the Spartans, who, when they

returned from beating the enemy, found their slaves in possession of

their households. You conquer Prussians and Austrians on the frontier,

and leave monks at home. But, as long as you spare the spiders, you must

not complain of cobwebs. Crush intriguers, an you will put an end to

intrigue," said the bold ex-bishop.

"The man insults the Republic who charges her citizens with intrigue,"

was the whispered, and very formidable, menace of Sieyes. "Monsieur, you

have yet to learn what _is_ a constitution."

The Abbe had incurred some ridicule by his readiness in proposing

constitutions. His antagonist, like a hornet, instantly fixed his sting

upon the naked spot.

"No, Monsieur, I perfectly know what is a modern constitution--it is the

credit of a charlatan--it is the stock of a political pedlar, made only

for sale to simpletons--it is an umbrella, to be taken down when it

rains--it is a surtout in summer, and nakedness in winter. It is, in

short, a contrivance, to make a reputation for a sciolist, and to govern

mankind on the principles of a reverie."

"This is the language of faction," exclaimed Sieyes, indignantly rising.

"Pardon me," said his imperturbable antagonist; "the language of faction

is the language of quacks to dupes; it is the language learned in the

clubs and taught in the streets--the language which takes it for

granted, that the hearer is as destitute of brains, as the speaker is of

principle." All eyes were turned on the parties.

But his hearer simply said, yet with a glance of fire--

"Monseigneur, you should remember, that you are not in our diocese,

haranguing your chaplains. You forget also, that in France the age of

quackery is over. There are no more dupes--have _you_ your passports

ready?"

This produced not even a sneer on the marble countenance of the

adversary.

"Monsieur de Sieyes," was the ready reply, "let me not hear _you_ talk

of despair. Quackery will never be at an end in France. The true quack

is a polypus; cut him into a thousand pieces, he only grows the

faster;--he is a fungus, give him only a stone to cling to, and he

covers it;--he is the viper, even while he hides in his hole, he is only

preparing to bite in the sunshine; and when all the world think him

frozen for life, he is only concocting venom for his summer exploits.

Quacks will live, as long as there are dupes--as leeches will live, as

long as there are asses' heels to hang on." He then rose, making a

profound bow, with "Bon soir, Monsieur l'Abbe--never fear--dupes will be

eternal."

This produced some confusion and consternation among the friends of

Sieyes. But a new scene of the night was announced, and all flowed

towards the private theatre.

I was yet to see more of this daring talker; but I was not surprised to

hear next day, that he had left Paris at midnight, and was gone, no one

knew whither. The capital might have been hazardous for him. Sieyes was

probably above revenge; but there were those who would have readily

taken the part upon themselves, and a _cidevant_ bishop would have made

a showy victim. How he escaped even so far, is among the wonders of a

life of wonder. I afterwards saw the fugitive, at the head of European

councils, a prince and a prime minister; the restorer of the dynasty

under which he fell, the overthrower of the dynasty under which he rose;

bearing a charmed life, and passing among the havoc of factions, and

even escaping from the wrecks of empire, more like an impalpable spirit

than a man.

But the change of his style was scarcely less remarkable than the change

of his fortunes. He was then no longer the hot and heady satirist; he

had become the sly and subtle scorner. No man said so many cutting

things, yet so few of which any one could take advantage: he anatomized

human character without the appearance of inflicting a wound; he had all

the pungency of wit without its peril, and reigned supreme by a terror

which every one pretended _not_ to feel. The change, after all, was only

one of weapons; in the first period it was the knife, in the second the

razor--and perhaps the latter was the more deadly of the two.

The theatre was fitted up with the taste of a people more essentially

theatrical than any other in the world. For not merely the eye, but the

tongue, is theatrical; and not merely the stage, but every portion of

private life. Every sentiment, every sound, is theatrical; and the stage

itself is the only natural thing in the country, from Calais to Bayonne.

As we took our seats in the little gilded box, which was made only for

two; though probably for _tete-a-tetes_ of a more romantic order than

ours, Elnathan observed to me, "You will now see two of the most

remarkable _artistes_ in France--Talma, beyond all comparison our first

actor; and another, an amateur, whom I think altogether one of the

finest women in existence. You may pronounce, that she ought to be

younger for perfection; but there is beauty in the fruit as well as in

the flower, and not the less beautiful though it is of a different kind.

But you shall see."

The curtain now drew up, and we saw the commencement of the little

_drame_ of _Paul et Virginie_. St Pierre's charming story has since been

worn out on all the boards of Europe; but it was then new to the stage,

and the audience gazed and listened, smiled and wept, with all the

freshness of delicious novelty. All the earlier portions of the

performance were what we have since so repeatedly seen them; we had the

scenery of the Mauritius, painted with habitual French skill, the

luxuriant vegetation, the rosy sky, and the deep purple of the ocean.

The negro-dances were exhibited, by _ballerine_ from the opera; and all

was in suspense for the appearance of the two stars of the night. Paul's

_entre_ was received with unbounded plaudits; he was so simply dressed,

and looked so completely the young wanderer of the groves, that I could

not conceive him to be the grand pillar of tragedy in France. He was

incomparably the handsome peasant of the tropics; yet, as his part

advanced, I could discover in his deep eye and powerful tone, the actor

capable of reaching the heights of dramatic passion. He was scarcely

above the middle size, with features whose magic consisted in neither

their strength nor beauty, but in their flexibility. I had never seen a

countenance so capable of change, and in which the change was so

instantaneous and so total. From the most sportive openness, a word

threw it into the most indignant storm, or the most incurable despair.

From wild joy, it was suddenly clouded with a weight of sorrow that

"refused to be comforted." His accents were singularly sweet, yet clear;

and, like his change of countenance, capable of the most rapid change

from cheerfulness to the agonies of a breaking heart. His charm was

reality; the power to carry away the audience with him into the scene of

the moment. I had not been five minutes looking at him, when I was as

completely in the Mauritius, as if I had been basking in its golden

sunshine, and imbibing the breeze from fair palms.

But his fascination and ours was complete when Virginie appeared.

Nothing could be less artificial than her costume; the simple dress of

Bengalese blue cloth, a few cowrie shells round her neck, and a shell

comb fastening up the braids of profusion of raven hair. She came

floating rather than walking down the mountain path; and her first few

words, when Paul rushed forward and knelt to kiss her feet, and the half

playful, half fond air with which she repelled him, seemed to me the

most exquisite of all performances. I observed, too, that her style had

more nature in it than that of Talma. I had till then forgotten that he

was an actor; but, placed beside her, I could have almost instinctively

pronounced that Paul was a Frenchman and Virginie a Creole. I whispered

the remark to Elnathan, who answered, "that I was right in point of

fact; for the representative of Virginie, though not a native of the

Mauritius, was of tropical birth, the widow of a French noble, who had

married her in the colonies and who had been one of the victims of the

Revolution."

"And yet an amateur actress?"

"Yes; but we never ask such questions in France. Every body does the

same. You should see one of our 'bals a la victime,' in which the

express qualification for a ticket is having lost a relative by the

guillotine."

"But who is this charming woman?"

"A woman of birth and fortune, of charming talents, and supposed at this

moment to exercise the highest influence with the most influential

personage of the government;--even the bewitching Madame de Fontenai has

given way to her supremacy."

I observed, "That though neither could compete with English beauty in

point of features, there was a singular fascination in both--their

countenances seemed remarkably connected with the play of their minds.

"There is still a distinction," said Elnathan, after a long and calm

look through his _lorgnette_--in the style of that inspection which an

artist might give to a picture of acknowledged renown; or perhaps which

a Mahometan dealer might fix on an importation from Circassia; "but one

which," said he, dropping his glass, "I find it difficult to define."

"You have already," said I, "given Madame Roland her place at the head

of Republicans, let us suppose Madame de Fontenai the fine and

fastidious aristocrat. While this lovely being's elegance of manner, and

mixture of grace and dignity, would make an admirable figure at the head

of a French court, if such a thing were not now beyond all possibility."

"Are you aware," said the Jew, with sudden seriousness, "that a

prediction, or at least some extraordinary conjecture on the subject,

has gone the round of the circles. The tale is, that while she was still

a girl in the West Indies, one of the negro dispensers of fortune, an

Obi woman, pronounced that she should ascend a throne. I must, however,

add the _finale_ to qualify it--that she should die in an hospital."

"The scale," said I, "goes down too suddenly in that case: she had

better remain the beautiful and happy creature that she is. Yet a being

formed in this expressive mould was not meant either to live or die like

the rest of the world."

"True, in other countries," said Elnathan, with a glance round, as if a

_huissier_ was at his elbow; "but here the affair is different--or

rather, the course of nature is the scaffold. That beautiful woman has

lately had the narrowest escape from the Revolutionary committee; and I

can tell you that it is utterly impossible to know what to-morrow may

bring even to her. She is too lovely not to be an object of rivalry; and

a word may be death."

Such was my first sight of Josephine de Beauharnais.

This charming performance proceeded with infinite interest. But it

differed from the course which I have since seen it take. The scene next

showed Virginie in France. She was in the midst of all the animation of

Parisian life--no longer the simple and exquisite child of nature, but

the conscious beauty; still in all the bloom of girlhood, but exhibiting

the graces of the woman of fashion. Surrounded by the admiration and

adulation of the glittering world, she had given herself up to its

influence, until her early feelings were beginning to fade away. The

scene opened with a ball. Virginie, dressed in the perfection of

Parisian taste, was floating down the dance, radiant with jewels and

joy, the very image of delight, when her eye dropped upon the figure of

a stranger, standing in a recess of the superb apartment, with arms

folded, a moody brow, and a burning gaze fixed upon her. A pang shot

through her heart. In her exquisite acting, a single gesture, a single

glance, showed that all the recollections of her native isle had

returned. She was the child of nature and of sensibility once more. She

tottered from the dance, tremblingly approached the stranger, and fell

at his feet. That stranger was Paul; and Talma, in his finest tragedy,

never displayed more profound emotion, nor produced more enthusiastic

applause, than when he raised her up, and with one look, and one word,

"Virginie,"--forgot all and forgave all.

But we were spared the catastrophe, which would certainly have been an

ill return for the profusion of sighs and tears which the fair

spectators gave to the performance. The ruling genius of the night, the

minister's wife, officially inspired to do honour to the triumphs of the

State, had employed the talents of her _decorateurs_ actively during our

stay at the supper-table; and when the curtain rose for the third act,

instead of "a stormy sea and the horrors of shipwreck," according to the

stage directions, we saw a stage Olympus, in which the whole _elite_ of

the Celestials escorted a formidable Bellona-like figure, the cuirassed

and helmed Republic, in triumphal procession, to an altar covered with

laurels and flaming with incense, inscribed "_a la Liberte_." Some

stanzas, more remarkable for their patriotism than their poetry, were

chanted by Minerva, Juno, and the rest of the Olympians, IN HONOUR of

the "jour magnifique de victoire, Jemappes." A train of _figurantes_,

the monarchies of Europe, came forward, dancing and depositing their

crowns and sceptres at the foot of the altar, (a sign, at least,

tolerably significant;) the whole concluding with an exhibition of the

bust of Dumourier, on which Madame laid a chaplet of laurel, accompanied

with a speech in the highest republican style--bust, speech, and Madame,

being all alike received with true Gallic rapture.

On that night, to have doubted the "irresistible, universal, and

perpetual" triumph of the Republic, would have been high-treason to

taste, to hospitality, and the ladies; and for that night our belief was

unbounded. All had made up their minds that a new era of human felicity

had arrived; that "all the world was a stage," in the most dancing and

delightful sense of the words; and that feasting and fetes were to form

the staple of life for every future age. We were to live in a rosebud

world. I heard around me in a thousand whispers, from some of the

softest politicians that ever wore a smile, the assurance, that France

was to become a political Arcadia, or rather an original paradise, in

which toil and sorrow had no permission to be seen. In short, the world,

from that time forth, was to be changed; despotism was extinguished; man

was regenerated; balls and suppers were to be the only rivalry of

nations; Paris was, of course, to lead France; France, of course, to

lead the globe;--all was to be beauty, _bonhommie_, and _bonbons_! And,

under the shade of the triumphant tricolor, all nations were to waltz,

make epigrams, and embrace for ever!

FOOTNOTES:

[14] MADRIGAL.

"Silence is the true love-token;

Passion only speaks in sighs;

Would you keep its charm unbroken,

Trust the eloquence of eyes.

Ah no!

Not so.

From my soul all doubts remove;

_Tell_ me, _tell_ me--that you love.

"Looks the heart alone discover,

If the tongue its thoughts can tell,

'Tis in vain you play the lover,

You have never _felt_ the spell.

Ah no!

Not so.

Speak the word, all words above;

_Tell_ me, _tell_ me--that you love."

INDIAN AFFAIRS--GWALIOR.

The painful interest with which the arrival of every Indian mail was

looked for in England during the continuance of the Affghan war with its

alternations of delusive triumphs and bloody reverses, has now almost

wholly died away: the public mind, long accustomed to sup full of the

horrors of the Khoord-Cabul pass, and the atrocities of the "arch-fiend"

Akhbar Khan, has subsided into apathy, and hears with indifference of

the occasional defeat and dethronement of rajahs and nawabs with

unpronounceable names--an employment which seem to be popularly

considered in this country the ordinary duty of the servants of the

Company. Yet the intelligence received during the last year from our

eastern empire, whether viewed in connexion with past events, or with

reference to those which are now "casting their shadows before," might

furnish abundant matter for speculation, both from the "moving incidents

by field" which have marked its course, and the portents which have

appeared in the political horizon. In Affghanistan all things seem

gradually returning to the same state in which the British invasion

found them. The sons of Shah Shoojah have proved unable to retain the

royal authority, which they attempted to grasp on the retirement of the

invaders; and Dost Mahommed, released from captivity, (as we expressed

in Feb. 1843 the hope that he would be,) once more rules in Cabul--there

destined, we trust, to end his days in honour after his unmerited

misfortunes--and has shown every disposition to cultivate a good

understanding with the government in India. Akhbar Khan is again

established in his former government of Jellalabad; and it is said that

he meditates availing himself of the present distracted state of the

Sikh kingdom, to make an attempt for the recovery of the Peshawar--the

refusal of his father to confirm which, by a formal cession to Runjeet

Singh, was one of the causes, it will be remembered, of the Affghan war.

There are rumours of wars, moreover, in Transoxiana, where the King of

Bokhara has subdued the Uzbek kingdom of Kokan or Ferghana, (once the

patrimony of the famous Baber,) and is said to meditate extending his

conquests across the Hindoo-Koosh into Northern Affghanistan--a measure

which might possibly bring him within reason of British vengeance for

the wrongs of the two ill-fated envoys, Stoddart and Conolly, who, even

if the rumours of their murder should prove unfounded, have been

detained for years, in violation of the rights of nations, in hopeless

and lingering bondage.[15] The Barukzye sirdars have repossessed

themselves of Candahar, whence they are believed to be plotting with the

dispossessed Ameer of Meerpoor in Scinde against the British; while at

Herat, the very _fons et origo mali_, the sons of Shah Kamran have been

expelled after their father's death, by the wily vizier Yar Mohammed,

who has strengthened himself in his usurpation by becoming a voluntary

vassal of Persia! Thus has the Shah acquired, without a blow, the city

which became famous throughout the world by its resistance to his arms;

and the preservation of which, as a bulwark against the designs of

Russia, was the primary object which led the British standards, in an

evil hour, across the Indus. Such has been the result of all the

deep-laid schemes of Lord Auckland's policy, and the equivalent obtained

for the thousands of lives, and millions of treasure, lavished in

support of them;--failure so complete, that but for the ruins of

desolated cities, and the deep furrows of slaughter and devastation,

left visible through the length and breadth of the land, the whole might

be regarded as a dream, from which the country had awakened, after the

lapse of five years, to take up the thread of events as they were left

at the end of 1838. But the connexion of our eastern empire with

trans-Indian politics has also fortunately subsided once more to its

former level; and, satisfied with this brief summary, we shall turn to

the consideration of those points in which our own interests are more

nearly implicated.

Our anticipations last year, as to the ultimate fate of Scinde and its

rulers, have been verified almost to the letter. The Ameers (to borrow a

phrase of Napoleon's germane to the matter) "have ceased to reign," and

their territory has formally, as it already was virtually, incorporated

with the Anglo-Indian empire. In our Number for February 1843, we gave

some account of the curious process of political alchemy by which a

dormant claim for tribute, on the part of Shah Shoojah, had been

transmuted into an active assertion of British supremacy over the Indus

and its navigation, and the appropriation of the port of Kurrachee at

the mouth, and the fortified post of Sukkur on the higher part of the

stream, of the river. To this arrangement the Ameers, from the first,

submitted with a bad grace, which it was easy to foresee would lead,

according to established rule in such cases in India, to the forfeiture

of their dominions. And such has been the case; but the transfer has not

been effected without an unexpected degree of resistance, in which the

heroism of Sir Charles Napier, and the handful of troops under his

command, against fearful numerical odds, alone prevented the repetition,

on a smaller scale, of the Affghan tragedy. The proximate cause of the

rupture was the refusal of the Ameers to permit the clearing away of

their _shikargahs_, or hunting-grounds, which were guarded with a rigid

jealousy, paralleled only by the forest laws of William the Conqueror,

and extended for many miles along the banks of the Indus, in a broad

belt of impenetrable jungle, at once impeding the navigation by

preventing the tracking of boats, and presenting dangerous facilities

for ambush. To these cherished game-preserves the Ameers clung with a

desperate pertinacity, which might have moved the sympathy of an English

sportsman--"admitting" (says the _Bombay Times_) "that we might strip

them of their territory, occupy Hydrabad, or seize their persons without

difficulty; but maintaining that they will never consent to become

parties to the act of degradation we insist upon, or give their enemies

the pretext for charging them with having made over to us by treaty, on

any consideration whatever, the most valued portion of their territory."

A force under Sir Charles Napier was at length moved from Sukkur towards

Hydrabad, with a view of intimidating them into submission; and on

February 14, 1843, they affixed their seals to the draught of an

agreement for giving up the _shikargahs_. But this apparent concession

was only a veil for premeditated treachery. On the 15th, the Residency

at Hydrabad was attacked by 8000 men with six guns, headed by one of the

Ameers; and the resident, Major Outram, after defending himself with

only 100 men for four hours, forced his way through the host of his

assailants, and reached Sir Charles Napier's camp. The Ameers now took

the field with a force estimated at 22,000 men; but were attacked on the

17th at Meeanee, a town near the Indus above Hydrabad, by 2800 British

and Sepoys, and completely routed after a desperate conflict, in which

the personal prowess of the British general, and his officers, was

called into display in a manner for which few opportunities occur in

modern warfare. The effect of the victory was decisive: the Ameers

surrendered themselves prisoners of war, and were shortly afterwards

sent to Bombay; the British flag was hoisted at Hydrabad; and a

proclamation of the Governor-general was published at Agra, March 5,

declaring the annexation to our empire of "the country on both sides of

the Indus from Sukkur to the sea."

The subjugation of the new province was not yet, however, complete, as

another Talpoor chief, Ameer Shere Mohammed of Meerpoor, still remained

in arms; and a second sanguinary engagement was fought, March 24, in the

neighbourhood of Hydrabad, in which 20,000 Beloochees were again

overthrown, with great slaughter, by 6000 Sepoy and English troops. The

town of Meerpoor and the important fortress of Oomerkote, on the

borders of the Desert, were shortly after taken; and Shere Mohammed,

defeated in several partial encounters, and finding it impossible to

keep the field in Scinde after the loss of his strongholds, retired with

the remainder of his followers up the Bolan Pass towards Candahar; and

is believed, as mentioned above, to be soliciting the aid of the

Barukzye chiefs of that city. It is not impossible that he may erelong

give us more trouble, as he will be assured of support from all the

Affghan and Belooch tribes in his rear, who would gladly embrace the

opportunity of striking a covert blow against the Feringhis; while the

fidelity of the only Belooch chief who still retains his possessions in

Scinde, Ali Moorad of Khyrpoor, is said to be at least doubtful. For the

present, however, the British may be considered to be in undisturbed

military possession of Scinde; and commerce is beginning to revive on

the Indus, under the protection of the armed steamers which navigate it.

But the great drawback to the value of this new acquisition is the

extreme unhealthiness of the climate from the great heat, combined with

the malaria generated by the vast alluvial deposits of the river; the

effects of which have been so deleterious, that of 9870 men, the total

force of the Bombay troops under Sir Charles Napier's command, not fewer

than 2890, at the date of the January letters, were unfit for duty from

sickness; and apprehensions were even entertained of a design on the

part of the sirdars of Candahar, in conjunction with Shere Mohammed, to

take advantage of the weakness of the garrison of Shikarpoor from

disease, to plunder the town by a sudden foray. There is, indeed, a

Hindostani proverb on this point, expressed in tolerably forcible

language--"If Scinde had previously existed, why should Allah have

created hell?" and so strong is this feeling among the sepoys, that of

the Bengal and Madras regiments lately ordered to relieve those

returning from Scinde, one (the Bengal 64th) absolutely refused to

march, and has been sent down to Benares to await an investigation; and

formidable symptoms of mutiny have appeared in several others. The

Bombay troops, however, who are proud of the conquest effected by their

own arms, are so far from sharing in this reluctance, that one regiment

has even volunteered for the service; and a report is prevalent, that it

is in contemplation to increase the strength of the Bombay army by

raising twelve or fourteen new regiments--so as to enable them to hold

Scinde without too much weakening the home establishment, or drawing

troops from the other presidencies.

The court of Lahore has lately been the scene of a tragedy, or rather

succession of tragedies, in which "kings, queens, and knaves," were

disposed of in a style less resembling any thing recorded in

matter-of-fact history than the last scene in the immortal drama of Tom

Thumb--a resemblance increased by the revival, in several instances, of

personages whose deaths had been reported in the last batch of murders.

It appears that the Maharajah, Shere Singh, had at length become jealous

of the unbounded influence exercised by his all-powerful minister, Rajah

Dhian Singh, who had not only assumed the control of the revenue, but

had more than once reproached the sovereign, when all the chiefs were

present in full _durbar_, with his habitual drunkenness and debauchery.

A quarrel ensued, and Dhian Singh retired from court to the hereditary

possessions of his family among the mountains, where he could set Shere

Singh at defiance; but an apparent reconciliation was effected, and in

July he returned to Lahore, and made his submission. His efforts were,

however, now secretly bent to the organization of a conspiracy against

the life of the Maharajah, in which the Fakir Azeer-ed-deen, a personage

who had enjoyed great influence under Runjeet, and many of the principal

sirdars, were implicated; and on Sept. 15th Shere Singh was shot dead on

the parade-ground by Ajeet Singh, a young military chief who had been

fixed upon for the assassin. The murder of the king was followed by that

of the Koonwur, or heir-apparent, Pertab Singh, with all the women and

children in their zenanas, even to an infant born the night before;

while Dhuleep Singh, a boy ten years old, and a putative son of Runjeet,

was brought out of the palace and placed on the throne. But Dhian Singh

was not destined to reap the fruits of his sanguinary treason. In his

first interview with Ajeet after the massacre, he was stabbed by the

hand of his accomplice; who was cut off in his turn the following day,

with many of the sirdars of his party, by Heera Singh, the son of Dhian,

who was commander-in-chief of the army, and had immediately entered the

city with his troops to avenge the death of his father.[16] Heera Singh

now assumed the office of vizier, leaving the title of king to the

puppet Dhuleep, in whose name he has since administered the government,

with the assistance of his father's elder brother Goolab Singh, a

powerful hill chief, who came to Lahore in November with 20,000 of his

own troops, to keep the mutinous soldiers of the regular regiments in

order. Meanwhile disorder and confusion reigns throughout the Punjab,

which is traversed in all directions by plundering bands of Akalees, (a

sort of Sikh fanatics,) and deserters or disbanded soldiers from the

army; while General Ventura and the other European officers have

consulted their own safety by quitting the country; and the remainder of

the vast treasures amassed by Runjeet, are lavished by Heera Singh in

securing the support of the soldiery to sustain him in his perilous

elevation. He is said to have sent off to the mountain strongholds of

his family the famous _koh-i-noor_ diamond, with great part of the royal

treasure; and it was so generally supposed that he meditated ridding

himself of the pageant king Dhuleep, in order to assume in his own

person the ensigns of royalty, that the uncles of the young prince had

made an attempt (which was, however, discovered and frustrated) to carry

him off from Lahore, and place him under British protection. A strong

party also exists in favour of Kashmeer Singh, who is said to be an

illegitimate son of Runjeet; and there were prevalent rumours that

dissensions had broken out between Heera Singh and his uncle; and,

though every care was said to be taken to prevent intelligence from

Lahore reaching the British, there can be little doubt that the country

is now on the eve of another revolution. It is obvious that this state

of things can end only in British intervention, whether rendered

necessary for the security of our own provinces, or called in by one of

the contending parties--which, in either case, must lead either to the

Punjab being taken wholly into our own hands, or occupied and coerced

(like the Nizam's country) by a subsidiary force, under British

officers, supporting on the throne a sovereign bound by treaty to our

interests. An army has been assembled on the Sutlej to watch the

progress of events; but the Sikhs have hitherto cautiously abstained

from giving any pretext for our interference; and, as long as their

disorders are confined within their own frontier, such an act would bear

the aspect of wanton aggression. But though the appropriation of the

Punjab, in whatever form effected, cannot be long delayed, "the pear"

(to use a Napoleonic phrase) "is not yet ripe;" and as we intend to

return to the subject at no distant period, we shall dismiss it for the

present; while we turn to the consideration of the recent occurrences at

Gwalior--events of which the full import is little understood in

England, but which involve no less consequences than the virtual

subjugation of the last native state in India which retained the

semblance of an independent monarchy, and which, scarce forty years

since, encountered the British forces on equal terms at once in

Hindostan and the Dekkan.

The fortunes of the mighty house of Sindiah were founded by Ranajee, who

was a menial servant early in the last century in the household of the

Peshwah, Bajee Rao; and is said to have first attracted his master's

notice by the care with which he was found clasping to his breast,

during his sleep, the slippers which had been left in his charge. He

subsequently distinguished himself under the Peshwah in the famous

campaigns of 1737-8 against the Mogul emperor, Mohammed Shah: and on the

cession of Malwa to the Mahrattas in 1743, he received the government of

that province as a _jaghir_ or fief, which he transmitted at his death

to his son Mahdajee. The life of this daring and politic chief would be

almost identical with the history, during the same period, of Central

and Upper India, in which he attained such a degree of authority as had

not been held by any prince since Aurungzeeb; but we can here only

briefly trace his career through the labyrinth of war and negotiation.

In the disastrous defeat of Paniput, (1761,) where the united forces of

the Mahratta confederacy were almost annihilated by the Affghans under

Ahmed Shah Doorauni, he received a wound which rendered him lame for

life; but he soon resumed his designs on Hindostan, and in 1771 became

master for a time of Delhi and the person of the Mogul emperor, Shah

Alim. In the war with the English which followed, he conciliated the

esteem of the cabinet of Calcutta, by his generosity to the troops who

submitted at the disgraceful convention of Worgaom, in January 1779: and

at the peace of Salbye, in 1782, his independence was expressly

recognised by the British government, with which he treated as mediator

and plenipotentiary for the Peshwah and the whole Mahratta nation. He

had now, by the aid of a Piedmontese soldier of fortune, named De

Boigne, succeeded in organizing a disciplined force of infantry and

artillery, directed principally by European officers, with which no

native power was able to cope; and in 1785, after defeating

Gholam-Khadir the Rohilla, once more possessed himself of Delhi and its

titular sovereign, who became his pensioner and prisoner, while Sindiah

exercised in his name supreme sway from the Ganges to the Gulf of

Camboy, and from Candeish to the Sutlej. In 1790 he entered the Dekkan,

and was with difficulty prevented by Nana Furnavees, the able minister

of the youthful Peshwah, Madhoo Rao, from usurping the guardianship of

that prince, which would have given him the same ascendancy in the

Dekkan as he already held in Hindostan. But though thus at the summit of

power and prosperity, he constantly affected the humility befitting the

lowly origin of his house; and when at the court of Poonah in 1791,

placed himself below the hereditary nobles of the Mahratta empire, with

a bundle of slippers in his hand, saying, "This is my place, and my

duty, as it was my father's." In the words of Sir John Malcolm,

(_Central India_, i. 122,) "he was the nominal slave, but the rigid

master, of the unfortunate Shah Alim; the pretended friend, but the

designing rival, of the house of Holkar; the professed inferior in

matters of form, the real superior and oppressor, of the Rajpoot princes

of Central India; and the proclaimed soldier, but actual plunderer, of

the family of the Peshwah."

Mahdajee Sindiah died at Poonah in 1794, in the fifty-second year of his

age; and, leaving no issue, bequeathed his extensive dominions to his

nephew and adopted son, Dowlut Rao Sindiah. The prince at his accession

found himself master of an army of seventy-five disciplined battalions,

mostly commanded by French officers, and forming an effective force of

45,000 men, with 300 well-equipped guns, and a vast host of irregular

cavalry, armed and appointed in the native fashion; and his territories

included the so-deemed impregnable fortress of Gwalior, as well as

Ahmednuggur, Aurungabad, Broach, and other strong places of minor note.

His influence was paramount at the court of Poonah; and while by the

possession of Cuttack, on the shores of the Bay of Bengal, he

interrupted the communication by land between Calcutta and Madras, his

frontier on the Nerbudda pressed, on the north, the then narrow limits

of the Bombay presidency, which as surrounded on all other sides by the

states of his Mahratta confederates. A prince holding this commanding

position seemed qualified to become the arbiter of India; but Dowlut

Rao, though deficient neither in military capacity nor talent for

government, was only fourteen at the death of his predecessor; and his

inexperience made him a tool in the hands of an unprincipled minister,

Shirzee Rao Ghatka, who directed all his efforts to undermine, by force

or intrigue, the ascendency of the upright and patriotic Nana Furnavees

at Poonah. The young Peshwah, Madhoo Rao, had perished in 1795 by a

fall from the roof of his palace; and the reign of his successor, Bajee

Rao, was a constant scene of confusion and bloodshed; till, after the

death of Nana in 1800, he fell completely under the control of Sindiah,

who thus became the virtual head of the Mahratta confederacy. But in an

attempt to crush the rising power of Jeswunt Rao Holkar, the united

forces of Sirdiah and the Peshwah received a complete defeat near

Poonah, in Oct. 1802;--and Bajee Rao, driven from his capital, sought

shelter from the British, with whom he concluded, in December of the

same year, the famous treaty of Bassein, by which he bound himself, as

the price of his restoration to his dominions, to conform to the English

political system, and admit a subsidiary force for the protection of his

states.

These stipulations amounted, in fact, to the sacrifice of Mahratta

independence; and the war, which from that moment became inevitable,

broke out early in the following year. Sindiah, who had not been

consulted on the treaty of Bassein, from the first refused to be bound

by its conditions; and after some fruitless attempts at negotiation,

took the field (July 1803) in conjunction with Rhagojee Bonsla, the

Rajah of Berar, against the Peshwah and the English. The five months'

campaign which followed, rivaled Napoleon's Prussian warfare of 1806, in

the rapidity with which a great military power was struck down, by (in

the words of Alison) "an uninterrupted series of victories, which

conducted our eastern empire to the proud pre-eminence which it has ever

since retained." Perron, who on the return of De Boigne in 1796 to

Europe, had succeeded him in the government of Hindostan, and the

command of Sindiah's regular troops in that quarter, was defeated by

Lake at Allighur, (Aug. 29,) and soon after quitted India and returned

to his native country; and a second decisive victory under the walls of

Delhi, (Sept. 11,) opened the gates of the ancient Mogul capital to the

British, and released the blind old emperor, Shah Alim, from the long

thraldom in which he had been held by the French and Mahrattas. Agra,

with all the arsenals and military stores, was taken Oct. 17; and the

desperate conflict of Laswarree, (Nov. 1,) consummated the triumphs of

Lake by the almost total annihilation of Sindiah's regulars--seventeen

battalions of whom, with all their artillery, were either destroyed or

taken on the field of battle. The whole of Sindiah's possessions in

Hindostan thus fell into the power of the British--whose successes in

the Dekkan were not less signal and rapid. On the 23d Sept., the

combined army of 50,000 men, commanded in person by Sindiah and the

Rajah of Berar, including 10,000 regular infantry and 30,000 horse, with

upwards of 100 guns, was attacked at ASSYE by 4500 British and Sepoys

under General Wellesley--and the glorious event of that marvellous

action at once effectually broke the power of the confederates, and for

ever established the fame of WELLINGTON.[17] A last appeal to arms at

Argaom, (Nov. 28,) was attended with no better fortune to the Mahrattas;

and Sindiah and his ally were compelled to sue for peace, which was

concluded with the latter on the 17th, and with the former on the 30th

December. By this treaty the imperial cities of Delhi and Agra, with the

protectorate of the Mogul emperor, and the whole of the _Dooab_, or

territory between the Jumna and Ganges, were ceded to the British; who

also acquired Cuttack on the eastern coast, and Broach on the western,

with Aurungabad, Ahmednuggur, and extensive territories in the Dekkan.

Sindiah, moreover, agreed to receive a British resident at his court--an

office first filled by Major, afterwards Sir John Malcolm--and engaged

to conform in his foreign policy to the views of the British

government; ceding, at the same time, certain districts for the

maintenance of a subsidiary force, which, however, was not to be

encamped on his territories.

During the contest with Holkar and the Bhurtpore rajah in the following

year, Sindiah showed strong symptoms of hostility to the British, and

had even put his troops in motion with the view of relieving Bhurtpore;

but the speedy termination of the war saved him from committing himself

by any overt act; and a new treaty was signed, Nov. 1805, in

confirmation of the former, with an express stipulation that the

perfidious Ghatka should be excluded from his councils. He never

afterwards broke with the British government; and though he was known to

have maintained a correspondence with Nepaul during the war of 1815, he

observed a prudent neutrality in the great Mahratta and Pindarree war of

1817-18, which terminated in the total overthrow of all the other

Mahratta princes. This catastrophe left him the only sovereign in India

possessed of any degree of substantial independence, and with a

territory which, after all the cessions, was still of great extent,

though much scattered and intersected by the possessions of Holkar and

other rulers; so that, as Bishop Heber describes it in 1825, "not even

Swabia or the Palatinate can offer a more checkered picture of

interlaced sovereignties than Maywar and indeed all Malwa.... Scarcely

any two villages belong to the sane sovereign." His frontier extended on

the north to the Chumbul, and on the south reached Boorhanpoor and the

Taptee, almost enveloping the remaining dominions of Holkar, and

bordering westward on the Guikwar's country near Baroda.

The whole superficies comprehended, in a very irregular shape, about

40,000 square miles, with a revenue supposed to exceed L2,000,000; and

the army kept on foot (independent of garrisons and the British

contingent) amounted to 20,000 regular infantry, with from 15,000 to

20,000 horse, and a park of 300 guns. The maintenance of this large

military establishment was a grievous burden to the country, and

frequently involved him in great pecuniary embarrassment; but to the end

of his life it continued to be his chief care. Gwalior, where the

headquarters had been fixed since 1810, became the royal residence; and

the _bushkur_, or camp, as it was called, gradually swelled into a great

city. The condition of his states in the latter years of his reign, is

thus characterized by the amiable prelate already quoted:--"Sindiah is

himself a man by no means deficient in talents or good intentions, but

his extensive and scattered territories have never been under any

regular system of control; and his Mahratta nobles, though they too are

described as a better race than the Rajpoots, are robbers almost by

profession, and only suppose themselves to thrive when they are living

at the expense of their neighbours. Still, from his well-disciplined

army and numerous artillery, his government has a stability which

secures peace, at least to the districts under his own eye; and as the

Pindarrees feared to provoke him, and even professed to be his subjects,

his country has retained its wealth and prosperity to a greater degree

than most other parts of Central India."

Dowlut Rao died at Gwalior, March 21, 1827, leaving no male issue; and

with him expired the direct line of Ranajee Sindiah: but he had

previously empowered his widow, the Baiza Baee, (a daughter of the

notorious Ghatka,) in conformity with a practice sanctioned by the

Hindoo law, to adopt a son and successor for him, after his decease,

from the other branches of the Sindiah family. Her choice fell on a

youth eleven years of age, named Mookt Rao, then in a humble rank of

life, who was eighth in descent from the grandfather of Ranajee; and he

was accordingly installed, June 18, by the title of Jankojee Sindiah, in

the presence of the British Resident and the chiefs of the army,

espousing at the same time a granddaughter of his predecessor. The

regency was left, in pursuance of the last injunctions of Dowlut Rao, in

the hands of the Baiza Baee, whose administration was marked by much

prudence and ability; but the young Maharajah speedily became so

impatient of the state of tutelage in which he found himself retained,

that Lord William Bentinck, then governor-general, found it expedient to

visit Gwalior as a mediator, in December 1832, in order to reconcile him

to the control of his benefactress, in whom the government for life was

considered to have been vested by the will of her late husband.[18] The

remonstrances of the governor-general produced, however, but little

effect. On the 10th of July 1833, a revolt, fomented by the young

prince, broke out among the soldiery, whose pay had imprudently been

suffered to fall into arrear; and the Baiza Baee, after a fruitless

attempt at resistance, was compelled to quit the Gwalior territory. The

British authorities, though they had previously shown themselves

favourable to her cause, declined any direct interference on her behalf;

and after remaining for some time on the frontier with a body of troops

which had continued faithful to her, in the hope of recovering her power

by a counter-revolution, she eventually fixed her residence at Benares,

leaving her ungrateful _protege_ in undisturbed possession of the

government. This was administered in the manner which might have been

expected from a youth suddenly raised from poverty to a throne, and

destitute even of the _modicum_ of education usually bestowed on Hindoos

of rank. The revenues of the state were wasted by the Maharajah in low

debauchery, while the administration was left almost wholly in the hands

of his maternal uncle, who bore the title of Mama-Sahib; but his

influence was far from adequate to repress the feuds of the refractory

nobles, and the mutinies of the turbulent and ill-paid troops, who

frequently made the capital a scene of violence and bloodshed. The

relations with the cabinet of Calcutta continued, however, friendly; and

Lord Auckland, when on his return on his famous tour to the Upper

Provinces, paid a visit to Gwalior in January 1840, and was received

with great pomp by the Maharajah. But the frame of Jankojee Sindiah was

prematurely undermined by his excesses; and he died childless, February

7, 1843, not having completed his twenty-seventh year.

The ceremony of adopting a posthumous heir, which had taken place at the

death of Dowlut Rao, was now repeated; and a boy nine years old, the

nearest kinsman of the deceased sovereign, was placed on the musnud,

under the name of Jeeahjee Rao Sindiah, by the _Maha-rane Baee_, or

queen-dowager; who, though herself only twelve years of age, assumed the

regency in conjunction with the Mama-Sahib. But little permanence could

be expected in a state so constituted from the government of a child,

and a man without adherents or influence, though they were recognized as

regents by the British authorities:--and the catastrophe was hastened by

an imprudent investigation, which the Mama-Sahib instituted, into the

peculations of the Daola-Khasjee, the minister of the late Maharajah.

The deficit is said to have amounted to not less than three crores of

rupees, (L3,000,000,) which had probably been employed in corrupting the

troops; and on the night of July 16, a general mutiny broke out. The

Resident, finding all interference unavailing, quitted Gwalior with the

Mama-Sahib, and repaired to Dholpoor near the frontier:--while the whole

sovereign power was usurped by the Khasjee, who had succeeded in

bringing over the young Baee to his interests, and who even sent troops

and artillery to the banks of the Chumbul, to dispute, if necessary, the

passage of the English. The cabinet of Calcutta now, however,

considered, that the attitude of hostility which had been assumed, as

well as the expulsion of a minister who was in some measure under

British guarantee, justified a departure from the principle of

non-intervention which had hitherto been invariably acted upon with

regard to the internal affairs of the state of Gwalior. A considerable

force, under the title of an army of exercise, was assembled at Agra,

where the commander-in-chief, Sir Hugh Gough, arrived Oct. 21, and was

joined, Dec. 11, by the governor-general himself, who appears to have

regarded the settlement of the once-mighty realm of Sindiah as a

"dignus vindice divo nodus" requiring his immediate presence. The

Gwalior _durbar_, meanwhile, presented a scene of mingled tumult and

panic--some of the officers having formed a party hostile to the

usurping Khasjee, while the mutinous soldiery loudly clamored against

submission; and letters were dispatched to the Rajpoot and Boondela

chiefs, soliciting their aid to repel the threatened invasion of the

Feringhis. At a council held Dec. 7, the most warlike sentiments

prevailed; and some of the military leaders proposed that the British

should be suffered to pass the Chumbul and besiege Gwalior, while the

Mahrattas, getting round their rear, were to pour down on Agra and

Delhi, and raise the Hindoo population! But the news of the

governor-general's arrival struck them with consternation, and vakeels

were sent to Agra, to learn on what terms a pacification might yet be

effected. The envoys had an audience of the governor-general on the

13th; but the march of the troops had commenced the day before, and was

not countermanded even on the surrender of the Khasjee, who was brought

in chains to Dholpoor on the 17th--the military chiefs opposed to him

having persuaded or compelled the Baee to give him up--and he was

immediately sent off as a state-prisoner to Agra.

The army meanwhile, had entered the Gwalior territory, and a

proclamation was issued, declaring that it appeared "not as an enemy,

but as a friend to the Maharajah, bound by treaty to protect his

highness's person, and to maintain his sovereign authority against all

who are disobedient and disturbers of the peace." The insurgent chiefs,

who appear to have confidently expected that the British would withdraw

as soon as the Khasjee was given up, now made fresh attempts at

negotiation; and matters were apparently so far arranged, that

preparations were made for the reception of the Baee, in camp, on the

28th. But it was soon evident that these overtures had been made only

for the sake of gaining time; and after a halt of five days, which had

been actively employed by the Mahrattas, the troops resumed their

advance upon Gwalior, accompanied by the governor-general in person. On

the 29th of December, the two divisions under the commander-in-chief and

General Grey, moving on separate lines of march, found the enemy drawn

up in well-chosen positions at Maharajpoor and Punniar, and prepared to

resist their progress. The British and Sepoy effective strength was

about 14,000 men, with forty guns, and a small body of cavalry: the

Mahratta infantry was nearly equal in number; but they had 3000 horse,

and all the advantages of a strong position, on heights protected in

front by difficult ravines, and defended by a hundred pieces of

excellently served artillery. The conflict appears to have been the

severest which had been seen in India since Laswarree and Assye. The

Mahrattas, (as described in the official accounts of Sir Hugh Gough, who

admits that he "had not done justice to the gallantry of his

opponents,") after their intrenchments and batteries had been carried by

the bayonet, with severe loss to the assailants, "received the shock

without flinching; and fought, sword in hand, with the most determined

courage." But they were at last driven from their ground, with great

carnage, by the superior prowess of the Anglo-Indian troops, whose

double victory was dearly purchased by the loss of more than 1000 killed

and wounded, including an unusual proportion of officers. All resistance

was now at an end: Gwalior, the Gibraltar of the East, was entered

without opposition; and a treaty was concluded, Jan. 10, ratified by the

governor-general and the restored regent, "for securing the future

tranquillity of the common frontier of the two states, establishing the

just authority of the Maharajah's government, and providing for the

proper exercise of that authority during his highness's minority." The

defeated army was to be in great part disbanded, and an additional

contingent force levied, of seven regiments of infantry and two of

cavalry, with twenty guns--a proportionate extent of territory, we

presume, being ceded for its maintenance, as usual in such cases:

exchanges were further made of certain frontier districts, for the

mutual convenience of the two contracting powers; and last, not least,

the expenses of the campaign were to be disbursed forthwith from the

Gwalior treasury. Every thing being thus settled satisfactorily, at

least to one party, the troops were to retire, without loss of time,

within the British frontier, leaving the internal administration in the

hands of the Mama-Sahib and the Baee; and the governor-general was to

set out from Gwalior on the 17th of January, on his return to Calcutta.

Thus the expedition, both in a diplomatic and military point of view,

was crowned with complete success. We must now proceed to examine it in

its political bearings.

The proclamation of British supremacy over India by the Marquis of

Hastings, after the conclusion, in 1818, of the war with the Mahrattas

and Pindarrees, amounted to an assumption on the part of the Company of

the same position relative to the native powers, as had been held by the

monarchs of the house of Timoor--who, from the conquest of Delhi by

Baber, adopted the title of Padishah or emperor, as lords-paramount of

India, and lost no opportunity of enforcing the _imperial_ rights, thus

asserted, against the other Hindoo and Moslem princes among whom the

country was divided; till after a century and a half of incessant

aggressive warfare, Aurungzeeb succeeded in uniting under his rule the

whole of Hindostan and the Dekkan, from the Himalaya to Cape Comorin.

Less than half that period sufficed for the establishment of the

Anglo-Indian empire on a far firmer basis than that of the Moguls had

ever attained; and if the same claim of indefeasible _suzerainte_, which

was set forward by their Moslem predecessors, had been openly advanced

and avowed as a principle, as it has long been acted upon _de facto_, it

would have been at once far more candid, and far more intelligible to

the natives, than the course which has been pursued, of grounding every

aggression on some pretended infraction of a compulsory treaty. The

recent case of Gwalior affords a strong illustration of the point which

we are endeavouring to establish, as the relations of that state with

the supreme government have hitherto been different from those of the

Indian sovereignties in general.[19] While the other native princes

(with the exception only of the Rajpoot chiefs of Bikaneer, Jesulmeer,

&c., who lay beyond what might till lately be considered the British

boundary) had surrendered the military possession of their territories,

almost entirely, to subsidiary corps under the control of the Company,

the dynasty of Sindiah alone (though British influence had been more

sensibly exercised under the feeble rule of Jankojee than during the

life of Dowlut Rao) still preserved its domestic independence almost

untouched, and kept on foot a powerful army, besides the contingent[20]

which it was bound by treaty to maintain--the only other mark of

dependence being the obligation not to contract alliances hostile to

British interests. If we are to regard the late transactions in this

point of view, it will be difficult to justify the invasion of an

_independent_ and friendly state on no other ground than our

disapprobation of a change of ministry, accompanied, though it may have

been, with the tumult and violence which are the usual concomitants of

an Asiatic revolution. But if the Company (as we conceive to be the

_practical_ aspect of the question) are held to be at the present day

the recognized, as well as the _de facto_, representatives of the Mogul

monarchs, there can be no doubt that, on the death of Jankojee Sindiah,

his dominions might fairly have been annexed to the Anglo-Indian empire

as a lapsed fief which had reverted to the suzerain by the failure of

heirs--a rule which would have been equally applicable to the case of

the rival Mahratta house of Holkar, the male line of which also became

extinct last year, and was replaced on the musnud of Indore by a boy

seven years old, a _adopted_ son of Hurry Rao Holkar. From the death of

Dowlut Rao Sindiah, indeed, the Gwalior state had presented a scene of

anarchy and misgovernment, to which allusion is made in the proclamation

of the governor-general;[21] and which, from the impunity it afforded to

the remnant of the Pindarrees and other marauders, and the consequent

insecurity of life and property both in the interior and on the

frontier, was intolerable alike to its neighbours and to its own

subjects. Under these circumstances, the acquiescence of the cabinet of

Calcutta in a second adoption of a child, to fill the throne of a

kingdom already brought to the verge of ruin by the vices and incapacity

of the former occupant, can be regarded in no other light than as an

injudicious stretch of forbearance, injurious to our own interests, and

uncalled for by those of the state thus subjected to a continuance of

misrule; and it is to be regretted, that our late victories have not

been followed up by the formal occupation of the country, and the

establishment of the order and strong government to which it has long

been a stranger. No other result can be anticipated from the half

measures which have been adopted, than the creation of a state of

confusion and resistance to authority, similar to that which prevails in

the distracted kingdom of Oude--ending inevitably, though perhaps at the

expense of a fresh contest, in its incorporation with the dominions of

the Company. Meanwhile, (as observed in the _Times_ of March 8th,) "we

have roused the passions of the Mahrattas against their sovereign and

against ourselves; but we have not taken that opportunity which the

moment of victory gave us, of effectuating a government essentially

strong and beneficial to the governed. The time therefore, we may

expect, will come, when a second interference will be demanded, both by

the recollection of our present conquest and the incompleteness of its

consequences; and we shall be doomed to find, that we have won two

hard-fought battles merely to enforce the necessity of a third."

The late campaign, short as it has fortunately been, becomes important,

if viewed with reference to a subject to which we have more than once

before alluded,[22] but which cannot be too often or too prominently

brought before the British public, who should never be suffered to lose

sight of the great truth, that it is _by our military power alone_ that

we hold our Indian empire. It is evident from all the circumstances, not

less than from the candid confession of Sir Hugh Gough himself, that the

determined resistance opposed by the Gwalior troops, (whom of late years

it has been the fashion in the Indian army to speak of as "Sindiah's

rabble,") and the discipline and valour shown in the defence of their

positions, were wholly unexpected by their assailants. But the prowess

and unflinching resolution displayed at Maharajpoor and Punniar, under

all the disadvantages of a desperate cause and inefficient commanders,

were worthy of the troops of De Boigne and Perron in their best days,

and amply prove that the Mahrattas of the present day have not

degenerated from their fathers, whose conduct at Assye won the praise of

the great Duke himself.[23] The defeat of British force in a pitched

battle on the soil of India, would be a calamity of which no man could

calculate the consequences; yet such a result would not have been

impossible, if the contempt of our commanders for the enemy had brought

them to the encounter with inadequate numbers; and the rulers of India

have reason to congratulate themselves that this underrated force

remained quiescent during our Affghan disasters, when intrigue and

difficulties were at their height among both Hindoos and Moslems, and

every disposable regiment was engaged beyond the Indus, in a warfare, of

the speedy termination of which there then appeared little prospect;

while the Moslems, both of the north and south, in Rohilcund and the

Dekkan, were on the verge of insurrection, the Rajah of Sattarah, the

representative of the former head of that great Mahratta confederacy, of

which Sindiah was then the only member retaining any degree of

independence, was busied in conspiracies, the absurdity of the proposed

means for which was not[24] (as some of his advocates in England

attempted to maintain) a proof of their non-existence. Had the old

Mahratta spirit been then alive in the breast of the degenerate

successor of Dowlut Rao, the appearance in the field of 20,000 troops

with a considerable share of discipline, and a numerous and excellent

artillery, might at once have given the signal, and formed a nucleus,

for a rising which would have comprehended almost every man who could

bear arms, and would have shaken to the centre, if not overthrown

utterly, the mighty fabric of our Eastern empire. It is true that the

indolent and sensual character of Jankojee Sindiah gave no grounds for

apprehension at the time; and the period of danger has now passed away;

nor is it probable that the Gwalior army, even if left at its present

strength, can ever again be in a situation to give trouble to our

government. But it is not less true, that when our difficulties were

greatest, a disciplined force did exist, in a position the most central

in India, which might have turned the quivering beam, if it had been

thrown into the scale against us in the moment of extreme peril.[25]

It is, therefore, with far different feelings from those expressed by

some of the newspaper scribes, both in India and England, that we heard

the declaration ascribed to the present governor-general, on his arrival

in India, "that the army should be his first care;"[26] and have

witnessed the spirit in which it has since been acted upon. "India,"

again to quote his own words on a late public occasion, "was won by the

sword;" yet the military spirit of the army, on which the preservation

of our empire depends, had been damped, and its efficiency wofully

impaired, by the injudicious reductions introduced by Lord William

Bentinck and persevered in by his successor; and the reverses and losses

of the Affghan war, following close in the train of these ill-advised

measures, had produced a disaffection for the service, and deterioration

in the _morale_ of the sepoys, from which evil auguries were drawn by

those best acquainted with the peculiar temperament of the native

soldiery.[27] The efforts of Lord Ellenborough have been from the first

directed to remove this unfavourable impression of neglect from the

minds of the troops; and the heroism displayed by the sepoys under his

own eye, in the late desperate encounters before Gwalior, must have

brought home to his mind the gratifying conviction that his efforts had

not been in vain. We noticed with satisfaction last year, the

well-deserved honours and rewards distributed to the corps, by whose

exploits the transient cloud thrown over our arms in Affghanistan had

been cleared away; and the same course has been worthily followed up in

the decorations cast from the captured Mahratta cannon, and conferred,

without distinction of officers or men, British or Sepoys, on the

victors of Maharajpoor and Punniar; as well as in the triumphal

monuments to be erected by Bombay for the victories in Scinde, and at

Calcutta for those before Gwalior. But while we render full justice to

the valour, patience, and fidelity of the sepoy infantry, now deservedly

rewarded by participation in those honours from which they have been too

long excluded, the truth remains unchanged of that of which Lake, and

many others since Lake of those who best knew India, have in vain

striven to impress the conviction on the authorities at home--the

paramount importance of a large intermixture of _British_ troops. "I am

convinced that, _without King's troops_, very little is to be expected

... there ought always to be at least one European battalion to four

native ones: this I think necessary." And again, in his despatch to the

Marquis Wellesley, the day after the arduous conflict at Laswarree--"The

action of yesterday has convinced me how impossible it is to do any

thing without British troops; and of them there ought to be a very great

proportion." It is true that the regulation lately promulgated by the

Duke of Wellington, that the heavy cavalry regiments shall in future

take their turn of Indian service, will in some measure remedy the evil

in that branch where it is most felt; and will at once increase their

military strength in India, and diminish the length of absence of the

different corps from Europe. The misconduct of the native regular

cavalry, indeed, on more than one occasion during the late Affghan war,

has shown that they are not much to be depended upon when resolutely

encountered. They are ill at ease in the European saddles, and have no

confidence in the regulation swords when opposed to the trenchant edge

of the native _tulwars_; while, on the other hand, the laurels earned by

Skinner's, Hearsay's, and other well-known corps of irregular horse,

might almost have induced the military authorities in India to follow

the example of the Mahrattas, who never attempted to extend to their

cavalry the European discipline which they bestowed on their infantry.

The sepoy infantry has ever been _sans peur et sans reproche_; yet,

though some of the most distinguished regiments of the Bengal army were

in the field before Gwalior, the honour of storming the death-dealing

batteries of Maharajpoor, was reserved for the same gallant corps which

led the way to victory under Clive at Plassey--her Majesty's 39th--and

which has now once more proved its title to the proud motto emblazoned

on its standards, _Primus in Indis_! The words of Lord Lake, (to refer

to him once more,) in his account of the battle of Delhi, might have

been adopted without variation by Lord Ellenborough in describing the

late actions. "The sepoys have behaved excessively well; but from my

observations on this day, as well as every other, it is impossible to do

great things in a gallant and quick style without Europeans;" and we

trust that, whenever the time shall arrive for the return of the present

governor-general to Europe, he will not fail to avail himself of the

weight which his personal experience will give him in the councils of

the nation, to enforce the adoption of a measure which, sooner or later,

will inevitably become one of absolute necessity.

No former governor-general of India entered on his office--at all times

the most arduous under the British crown--under such unfavourable

auspices, and with such a complicated accumulation of difficulties to

combat, as Lord Ellenborough; few, if any, of his predecessors have had

their actions, their motives, and even their words, exposed to such an

unsparing measure of malicious animadversion and wilful misconstruction;

yet none have passed so triumphantly through the ordeal of experience.

Many of his measures may now be judged of by their fruits; and those of

the Calcutta press who were loudest in their cavils, compelled to admit

the success which has attended them, are reduced to aim their censures

at the alleged magniloquence of the governor-general's proclamations;

which, it should always be remembered in England, are addressed to a

population accustomed to consider the bombast of a Persian secretary as

the _ne plus ultra_ of human composition, and which are not, therefore,

to be judged by the European standard of taste. Much of the hostility

directed against Lord Ellenborough, is, moreover, owing to his resolute

emancipation of himself from the bureaucracy of secretaries and members

of council, who had been accustomed to exercise control as "viceroys

over" his predecessors, and who were dismayed at encountering a man

whose previously acquired knowledge of the country which he came to

govern, enabled him to dispense with the assistance and dictation of

this red-tape camarilla. Loud were the complaints of these gentry at

what they called the despotism of the new governor-general, on finding

themselves excluded from that participation in state secrets in which

they had long reveled, in a country where so much advantage may be

derived from knowing beforehand what is coming at headquarters. But much

of the success of Lord Ellenborough's government may be attributed to

the secrecy with which his measures were thus conceived, and the

promptitude with which his personal activity and decision enabled him to

carry them into effect--success of which the merit is thus due to

himself alone, and to the liberty of action which he obtained by shaking

off at once the etiquettes which had hitherto trammeled the Indian

government. In July 1842 we ventured to pronounce, that "on the course

of Lord Ellenborough's government will mainly depend the question of the

future stability, or gradual decline, of our Anglo-Indian empire; and

if, at the conclusion of his viceroyalty, he has only so far succeeded

as to restore our foreign and domestic relations to the same state in

which they stood ten years since, he will merit to be handed down to

posterity by the side of Clive and Hastings." The task has been nobly

undertaken and gallantly carried through; and though time alone can show

how far the present improved aspect of Indian affairs may be destined to

permanency, Lord Ellenborough is at least justly entitled to the merit

of having wrought the change, as far as it rests with one man to do so,

by the firm and fearless energy with which he addressed himself to the

enterprise.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] It is to be regretted that the British government has never

requested the Porte to dispatch a mission to ascertain the fate of these

unfortunate officers. The Turkish Sultan is reversed at Bokhara as the

legitimate Commander of the Faithful, and his rescript would be treated

as a sacred mandate.

[16] Portraits of most of the actors in this bloody drama will be found

in Osborne's _Court and Camp of Runjeet Singh_.

[17] A note of Grant Duff, (_History of the Mahrattas_, iii. 239,)

relative to this period in the life of the British hero, is worth

quoting--"I have had occasion to observe how well the Duke of Wellington

must have known the Mahrattas, from having read his private letters to

Sir Barry Close (then Resident at Poonah) during the war of 1803.

Without being acquainted with their language, and, one would have

supposed, with little opportunity of knowing the people or their

history, his correct views of the Mahratta character and policy are very

remarkable. As the letters in question were shown to me confidentially

in 1817, in the course of my official duties, I may be only authorized

to state that, in some instances, his opinion of individuals,

particularly of Bajee Rao, was correctly prophetic." These letters are

now before the public, in the first and third volumes of Gurwood's

_Despatches_.

[18] See _Asiatic Journal_, May 1834. P. 7, Part II.

[19] See Montgomery Martin's _British Colonies_, i. p. 49, &c.

[20] The Gwalior contingent was called into the field on the occasion of

the late disturbances in Bundelkund, and did good service.

[21] "The want of cordial co-operation on the part of the officers of

the Gwalior state, in the maintenance of order on the frontier, had long

been a subject of just remonstrance, and various orders had been issued

by the late Maharajah, in accordance with the representations of the

British resident. These orders had but too often remained without due

execution; but in consideration of the long illness of his highness, and

the consequent weakness of his administration, the British government

had not pressed for satisfaction with all the rigour which the

importance of the subject would have warranted."

[22] See _Maga_, Aug. 1841, p. 174; July 1842, p. 110, &c.; and Feb.

1843, p. 75.

[23] "Our action on the 23d Sept. was the most severe battle that I have

ever seen, or that I believe has been fought, in India. The enemy's

cannonade was terrible, but the result shows what a small number of

_British troops_ will do."--_The Duke of Wellington to Colonel Murray,

Gurwood's Despatches_, i. 444. "It was not possible for any man to lead

a body into a hotter fire than he did the picquets that day at

Assye."--_Letter to Colonel Munro_, _ib._ 403.

[24] See our Number for July 1842, p. 108.

[25] The strength of the Mahratta army, at the time of Lord Auckland's

visit, was estimated at 35,000 men of all arms, including 15,000

irregular cavalry and 250 guns, besides the _Ekhas_, or body-guard of

500 nobles, privileged to sit in the sovereign's presence, who were

subsequently disbanded by Jankojee for disaffection. The infantry was

divided into four brigades, and consisted of thirty-four regular

regiments of 600 men each, and five regiments of irregular foot, or

_nujeebs_. A few of Dowlut Rao's French officers still survived; the

remainder were their sons and grandsons, and adventurers from all parts

of the earth. Not fewer than 25,000 troops, with nearly all the

artillery, were generally at headquarters in the _bushkur_, or camp, of

Gwalior.--See _Asiatic Journal_, May 1840.

[26] "We see much more of Toryism than of truth in this opinion,"

observes the _Eastern Star_, as quoted in the _Asiatic Journal_ for

December; "and we believe the man who entertains it, the last who should

ever be entrusted with power in this empire. It is as dangerous a

delusion as it would be to imagine we could do without an army at

all."--Pro-di-gi-ous!

[27] See an extract from the _Madras United Service Gazette_, in our

Number for Feb. 1843, p. 275, note.

THE FREETHINKER.

"With us ther was a DOCTOUR OF PHISIKE

In all this world ne was ther non him like

To speke of phisike and of surgerie:

* * * * *

He knew the cause of every maladie,

Were it of cold, or hote, or moist, or drie,

And wher engendered, and of what humour,

He was a veray parfite practioner--

* * * * *

His studie was but litel on the Bible."

CHAUCER.

It was in the year 18-- that I completed my professional education in

England, and decided upon spending in Paris the two years which had

still to elapse, before my engagement with my guardians would require me

to present myself for examination and approval at the Royal College of

Surgeons in London. The medical schools and hospitals of Paris were

then, as now, famous for their men of science, and for the useful

discoveries which clinical instruction--bedside ingenuity and

industry--is morally certain to carry along with it. Whatever may be

said of the French practitioners as a body--and my professional

brethren, I know, bring against them, as a national reproach, the charge

of inefficiency in the _treatment_ of disease, (remarkable for acuteness

and truth as their _diagnosis_ is allowed to be)--still I think it will

not be denied, that chiefly to the Parisian physicians, and to the

untiring energy of particular individuals amongst them, whom it would

not be difficult to name, are we indebted at this moment for some of the

most important knowledge that we possess--knowledge, be it understood,

derived altogether from investigations diligently pursued at the

patient's bedside, and obtained with the greatest judgment, difficulty,

and pains. As I write, the honourable and European reputation of _Louis_

occurs to my mind--an instance of universal acknowledgment rendered to

genius and talents wholly or principally devoted to the alleviation of

human suffering, and to the acquisition of wisdom in the form and by the

method to which I have adverted.

A mere attempt to refer to the many and various obligations which the

continental professors of medicine have laid upon mankind during the

last half century, would fill a book. They were well known and spoken of

in my youth, and the names of many learned foreigners were at that

period associated in my bosom with sentiments of awe and veneration. It

was some time after I had once resolved to go abroad, before I fixed

upon Paris as my destination. _Langanbeck_, the greatest operator of his

day, the _Liston_ of Germany, was performing miracles in Hanover.

_Tiedemann_, a less nimble operator, but a far more learned surgeon, had

already made the medical schools of Heidelberg famous by his lectures

and still valued publications; whilst the lamented and deeply

penetrating _Stromeyer_--the tutor and friend of our own amiable and

early-lost Edward Turner--had established himself already in

_Goettingen_, and drawn around him a band of enthusiastic students who

have since done honour to their teacher, and in their turn become

eminent amongst the first chemists of the day. With such and similar

temptations from many quarters, it was not easy to arrive at a steady

determination. I had hardly thought of Paris, when--as it often

happens--a thing of a moment relieved me from difficulty and doubt, and

helped me at once to a decision. A letter one morning by the post

induced me to set out for the giddiest and yet most fascinating of

European cities. James M'Linnie--who, by the way, died only the other

day of dysentery at Hong-Kong, a few hours after landing with the troops

upon that luckless island--was an old hospital acquaintance, and, like

me, _cutting and hewing_ his way to fame and fortune. He had

distinguished himself at Guy's, and quitted that school with every

reasonable prospect of success in his profession. He had not only passed

muster before the high and mighty court of examiners, but had received

on the occasion the personal warm congratulations of Abernethy and Sir

Astley Cooper; the former of whom, indeed, before he asked M'Linnie a

question, gave him confidence in his peculiar way, by requesting him

"not to be a frightened fool, for Mr. Abernethy was not the brute the

world was pleased to make him out;" and after a stiff and rough

examination shook the student heartily by the hand, and pronounced him

"not an ass, like all the world, but a sensible shrewd fellow, who,

instead of muddling his head with books, had passed his days, very

properly, where real life was only to be met with"--_videlicet_, in the

dead-house.

James M'Linnie was, at the time of which I speak, himself in Paris, and

enthusiastic in his devotion to the indefatigable and highly-gifted

teachers amongst whom he lived. He wrote to me, in the letter to which I

have above adverted--the first I received from him after his departure

from England--in the most glowing terms respecting them; and conjured me

by the love I bore our glorious profession--by my ardent aspirations

after fame, and by the strong desire which, he believed, I entertained

with himself and the majority of men, to serve and benefit my

fellow-creatures--not to waste my precious hours in England, but to join

him instantly "in the finest field of _operations_ that the world

presented." "We are pigmies in London," he continued in his own ardent

fashion--"boys, children, infants--they are _giants_ here. Such

anatomists! such physicians! Fancy one of our first men, C---- for

instance, standing for nearly one hour at the bedside of a labouring

man, and tracing the fellow's history step by step, patiently and

searchingly, in order to arrive at the small beginnings of disease, its

earliest indications, and first causes. I saw it done yesterday by one

to whom C---- could not hold a candle--a man whose reputation is

continental--whose practice does not leave him a moment in the day for

personal recreation--who is loaded with honours and distinctions. The

students listen to him as to an oracle; and with cause. He leaps to no

conclusions--his sterling mind satisfies itself with nothing but truth,

and is content to labour after mere glimpses and intimations, which it

secures for future comparison and study. Remind me when you come

out--for come out you must--of the story of the baker. I will tell it

you then in full. It is a capital instance of the professor's acuteness

and ability. A patient came into the hospital a month ago; his case

puzzled every one; nothing could be done for him, and he was about to be

discharged. The professor saw him, visited him regularly for a

week--watched him--noted every trifling symptom--prescribed for him;--in

vain. The man did not rally--and the professor could not say what ailed

him. One morning the latter came to the patient's bedside, and said,

'You tell me, _mon enfant_, that you have been a porter. Were you never

in any other occupation?' 'Yes,' groaned the poor fellow; 'I drove a

cabriolet for a year or two'---- 'Go on,' said the professor

encouragingly. 'And then,' continued the man, 'and then I was at a

boot-maker's; afterwards at a saddler's--and at last a porter.' 'You

have never worked at any other trade?' 'Never, sir.' 'Think again--be

quite sure.' 'No--never, sir.' Have you never been a baker?' 'Oh yes,

sir--that was twenty years ago--and only for a few months; but I was so

ill at the oven that I was obliged to give it up.' 'That will do, _mon

enfant_--don't tire yourself, try and go to sleep.' In the lecture-room

afterwards, the professor addressed the students thus: 'Gentlemen--once

in the course of my practice, I have met with the case of the porter,

and only once. It is now eighteen years since. The patient was a

baker--and I examined the subject after death. This man will die.' The

lecturer then proceeded to describe minutely and lucidly the seat of the

disease, its nature, and best treatment. He told them what might be done

by way of alleviation, and directed them to look for such and such

appearances after death. The man lingered for a few days, and then

departed. At the _post mortem_, the professor was found to be correct in

every particular. What say you to this by way of memory and quick

intelligence?" The letter went on to speak of the facility of procuring

subjects--as cheap and plentiful, to use M'Linnie's phrase, "as herrings

in England;" of the daily exhibition in the dissecting room of disease

of all kinds, in all stages; of the enthusiastic natures of both

teachers and pupils; of the earnest and inspiring character of hospital

practice; and at last, wound up its flattering history with a

peroration, that extinguished in an instant every spark of hesitation

that lingered in my mind. In less than a fortnight after M'Linnie's

summons, I was one of a mixed party in a diligence and eight, galloping

over the high-road to Paris, at the rate of five statute miles an hour.

I had taken care to carry abroad with me an introduction to _one_

influential member of the profession. I say _one_, because I refused,

with deliberation, to _encumber_ myself, as Doctor Johnson has it, with

more help than was actually necessary to my well-doing. A travelling

student, with a key to the confidence of one man of power and kindred

spirit, has all that he can desire for every professional purpose. If

his happiness depend upon social enjoyments, and he must needs journey

with a messenger's bag, or be utterly miserable, let him by all means

save his travelling expenses, and visit his natural acquaintances. My

letter of credit was obtained from my friend H----, who at the time

filled the anatomical chair at Guy's, and to whom I am grateful for more

acts of real kindness than he is willing to allow. To this letter of

credit, and to the acquaintance formed by its means, the reader is

indebted for the curious history I am about to relate. That the former

was likely to lead to something original and unusual, I certainly

suspected when H---- placed the document in my hands, with his last

words of caution and advice. I could hardly dream of half that was to

follow.

"Pray, take care of yourself, Mr Walpole," said my good friend; "you are

going to a very dangerous and seductive city, and you will require all

your firmness and good principles to save you from the force of evil

example. Don't be led away--don't be led away--that is all I beg of

you."

"I shall be careful, sir."

"You will see in the medical students of Paris a different set of men to

that which you have been accustomed to mix with here. There are some

fine fellows amongst them--hard-working, bold, enterprising young men;

but they are a strange body taken as a while. Don't cotton too quickly

with any one of them."

"Very well, sir."

"I am afraid you will find many highly improper notions prevalent

amongst them--immoral, shocking, disgraceful. Pray, don't assume the

manners of a Frenchman, Mr Walpole--much less his vices. There are very

few medical students in Paris who do not lead, I am sorry to say, a very

disreputable life; and make it a boast to live in open shame. You must

not learn to approve of conduct in Paris which you would have no

hesitation in pronouncing criminal in London."[28]

"Certainly not, sir."

"And let me, as a friend, entreat you, my dear sir, at no time to forget

that you are a Christian and a Protestant gentleman. Be sober and

rational, and, if there be any truth in religion at all, do not make a

mockery of it, by converting the Lord's day into a monstrous Saturnalia.

Here is your letter."

I took the document, bowed, and read the superscription. It was

addressed to Baron F----, chief surgeon at the Hotel Dieu, &c. &c. &c.

"I introduce you, Mr Walpole," continued the anatomist, "to one of the

most extraordinary men in Europe--and, what is more to the purpose, to

one of the best. Warmer benevolence, a more eager anxiety to relieve and

benefit his fellow-mortals, never burned in the heart of man. He is,

unquestionably, incontestably the first surgeon of the day; as a man of

science he is appealed to by the whole learned world--his practice is

enormous, and the fortune he has amassed by his unwearied industry and

perseverance immense; especially considered in reference to the career

of the most successful surgeons in Paris, who, if I mistake not, have

lived and died comparatively poor. Looked up to, however, as he is by

the learned and the great, you will, I think, when you know him, agree

with me in regarding his kindness to the helpless--his earnest

solicitude for the disabled poor who come under his care--his

unremitting attention to their complaints and wants--as constituting the

worthy baron's chief excellance. We are old friends; and for my sake I

am sure he will receive you well, and afford you all the assistance and

information in his power. He will put you on your mettle; and you must

be no lie-a-bed if you would profit by his instruction. At six in the

morning you will find him daily at his post in the hospital; and, whilst

sluggards are turning in their beds, he has prescribed for a hundred

sick, and put them in spirits for the day by his words of tenderness and

support."

"Did you study under the baron?" I enquired.

"I attended his lectures some years ago with the greatest advantage. I

never in my life was more struck by the amount of knowledge possessed by

one man. I attached myself to the professor, and he was pleased to admit

me to his friendship. I have lately been surprised to hear his manners

pronounced rough and even brutal, and his temper morose. For my own

part--and I watched him closely--I saw nothing but gentleness, and an

active disposition to do good at all times. The poor women and children

in the hospital loved him as a father, and I have seen their pale cheeks

flush, and dull eyes glisten as he approached their beds. This, I

thought, bespoke any thing but roughness and brutality in the surgeon.

What say you?"

"It would seem so."

"Well--I have written the baron a long letter concerning myself and my

own pursuits, believing that it will serve your interests better than a

mere formal letter of introduction. He will, I am sure, be pleased to

see you. Remember, Mr Walpole, an opportunity like the present may never

occur to you again. Be wise, and make the most of it."

Thus spoke my friend, and thus I received from him my credentials. My

only object in Paris was the ostensible one for which I came; and

accordingly, therefore, having secured a comfortable home with Madame

Bichat, a worthy motherly person residing in the "_Rue Richelieu,

vis-a-vis le Palais Royal_"--and having spent one long and gossiping

evening with my ancient chum M'Linnie--I buckled at once to my work.

Postponing all recreation and amusement until the time should arrive

which would make them lawful and give them zest, I left my lodgings the

second morning after my appearance in Paris, and made my way straight to

the dwelling-house of my future patron. It was eleven o'clock, the hour

at which the baron usually returned from the Hotel Dieu; five hours,

viz. from six till eleven A.M., being, as M'Linnie assured me, the time

allotted daily to the poor by the conscientious and distinguished

practitioner.

The baron was a bachelor, and he lived in first-rate style; that is to

say, he had magnificent apartments, in which it was his delight to

collect occasionally the united wit and learning of the capital, and a

handsome table for his friends at all times; for his hospitality was

unbounded. And yet his own daily habits were as simple and primitive as

might be. When at home, he passed his hours in the library, and slept in

the small bedroom adjoining it. The latter, like all dormitories in

France, was without a carpet, and altogether no better furnished than a

private ward in an English hospital. There was a small iron bedstead

just large enough for a middle-sized bachelor in one corner--a washing

apparatus in another--and a table and two chairs at some distance from

both. The naked and even uncomfortable aspect of this apartment had an

absolutely chilling effect upon me, as I passed through it on my way to

the great man himself; for, strange to say, the only road to the library

was through this melancholy chamber. Great men as well as small have

their "whims and oddities." The baron was reported to have taken pains

to make, what appeared to me, a very incommodious arrangement. A door

which had conducted to the library upon the other side of it had been

removed, and the aperture in which it had stood blocked up, whilst the

wall on this side had been cut away in order to effect an entrance. And

what was the reason assigned for so much unnecessary labour? The baron

had risen from nothing--had spent his early days in poverty and even

misery; and he wished to perpetuate the remembrance of his early

struggles, lest he should grow proud in prosperity, and forgetful of his

duties. The frequent sight of the few articles of furniture which had

been his whole stock twenty years before, was likely more than any thing

else to keep the past vividly before his eyes, and he placed them

therefore, to use his own words as attributed to him by my informant,

"between the flattery of the dazzling world without, and the silence of

his chamber of study and meditation." They no doubt answered their

object, in rendering the possessor at times low-spirited, since they

were certainly likely to have that effect even upon a stranger. On the

day of my introduction, however, I had little time for observation. My

name had been announced, and I passed rapidly on to the _sanctum

sanctorum_.

There is an aristocracy of MIND as well as an aristocracy of wealth and

social station; and, unless you be a soulless Radical, you cannot

approach a distinguished member of the order without a glow of loyal

homage, as honourable to its object as it is grateful to your own

self-respect. I entered the library of the far-famed professor with a

reverend step; he was seated at a large table, which was literally

covered with books, _brochures_, and letters opened and sealed. He was

dressed very plainly, wearing over a suit of mourning a dark coloured

dressing-gown, which hung loosely about him. He was, without exception,

the finest man I had ever seen, and I stopped involuntarily to look at

and admire him. As he sat, I judged him to be upwards of six feet in

height--(I afterwards learned that he stood six feet two,)--he was stout

and well-proportioned--his chest broad and magnificent--his frame

altogether muscular and sinewy. The face was full of authority and

command--every feature handsome, including even the well drawn lip, in

which there seemed to lurk scorn enough to wither you, if roused. The

brow was full, prominent, and overhanging--the eye small, blue, and

beaming with benevolence. Nature was mischievous when she brought that

eye and lip in company for life. A noble forehead, made venerable by the

grey hairs above it--grey, although the baron was hardly in the vale of

years--completed the picture which presented itself to my eye, and which

I noted in detail in less time than I have drawn it here--imperfectly

enough. The baron, who had received my letter of introduction on the

preceding day, rose to welcome me. His first enquiries were concerning

my friend H----, the next were in reference to my own plans--and he had

much to say of the different professors of London, with whose works and

merits he appeared thoroughly acquainted. I remained an hour with him;

and, some time before we parted, I felt myself quite at home with my new

acquaintance. During the conversation that took place upon this

memorable morning, the name of Z---- occurred. The baron praised him

highly: "his attainments as a surgeon," he said, "were very great;" and,

in other respects, he looked upon him as one of the most original and

wisest men of the age. It will be remembered by my professional readers

that Z----, although esteemed in England one of her first surgeons,

acquired an unenviable notoriety through the publication of certain

physiological lectures, in which the doctrines of materialism and

infidelity were supported, it must be allowed, with all the eloquence

and power of a first-rate mind. With my own settled views of

Christianity, early inculcated by a beloved mother--now, alas! no

more--I could not but regard the highly gifted Z---- as an enemy to his

species, who had unhappily abused the talents which Providence had given

him for a better purpose. Such being the case, it was with some pain and

great surprise that I listened to the encomiums from the lips of the

baron; and I ventured to hint that the speaker had, in all probability,

not heard of the infamous publication which had given so much sorrow and

alarm to all well-governed minds in England.

"Le voila!" said the baron in reply, taking up a book from the

table--"The noblest work of the age! Free from prejudice and bigotry of

every kind--I found my opinion of the man upon this book. Had he done

nothing else, he would have immortalized his name. Philosophy and

Science have hitherto borne him out in all his theories--will continue

to bear him out, and eventually compel posterity to regard him as

nothing short of the prophet and seer of nature. You may rely upon it,

Z---- has, by the very force of intellect, arrived at conclusions which

the discoveries of centuries will duly make good and establish."

I speak the simple truth when I aver, that these words of the baron gave

me infinite distress, and for a moment deprived me of speech. I hardly

knew what to say or do. At first I suspected that I had made some

unaccountable mistake, and brought my letter to the wrong individual.

H----, who was almost a Puritan in religious matters, could ever have

spoken of his friend in such favourable terms, if he had been aware of

the views which he so unscrupulously supported. A little reflection,

however, convinced me that a mistake was impossible. There is nothing in

this world more embarrassing than to sit in the presence of a superior,

and be compelled to listen to statements which you feel to be false, and

yet know not how with propriety to repel. My own youth, and the baron's

profound learning and attainments, were barriers to the free expression

of my thoughts; and yet I was ashamed to remain silent, and, as it were,

a consenting party to the utterance of sentiments which I abhorred.

"I cannot hope," I managed to say at last, "that science will ultimately

uphold his arguments, and prevent our relying as strongly as ever on our

old foundations."

"And why?" replied the baron quickly. "Why should we always be timid and

blind followers of the blind? Is it a test of wisdom to believe what is

opposed to reason upon the partial evidence of doubtful witnesses? Is it

weakness to engage all the faculties of the mind in the investigation of

the laws by which this universe is governed? And if the perception of

such immutable add eternal laws crushes and brings to nothing the fables

of men whom you are pleased to call _writers by inspiration_, are we to

reject them because our mothers and fathers, who were babes and

sucklings at the breast of knowledge, were ignorant of their existence?"

"Newton, sir," I ventured to answer, "made great discoveries, and he

revered these fables."

"Bah! Newton directed his gaze upwards into a mighty and stupendous

region, and he was awe-stricken--as who shall not be?--by what he there

beheld. He worshipped the unseen power, so does this man; he believed in

Revelation, so does he; but with him--it is the revelation which is made

in that wondrous firmament above, and in the earth beneath, and in the

glories that surround us. What knowledge had Newton of geology? what of

chemistry? what of the facts which they have brought to light?"

"Little perhaps--yet"----

"My good friend," continued the surgeon, interrupting me. "In the days

of your grand _philosophe_--would that he were alive now!--there were no

physical phenomena to reduce an ancient system of cosmogony to a mere

absurdity--no palpable evidences of the existence of this earth

thousands of years prior to its formation--you perceive?"

"I hear you, sir," I answered, gaining courage; "but I should, indeed,

be sorry to adopt your views."

"Of course you would!" said the baron, curling his inauspicious lip,

and giving expression to a feeling that looked very like one of contempt

or ridicule. "You come from the land of melancholy and bile--where your

holidays are fasts, and your day of rest is one of unmitigated toil. You

would be sorry to forego, no doubt, the prospect of everlasting torture

and eternal condemnation. Mr Z---- is too far advanced for you, I am

afraid."

At this moment there was a knock at the door leading into the

bed-chamber. The servant-man of the baron presented himself, and

announced a patient.

"Admit him," said the surgeon, and at the same time I rose to depart.

"Adieu!" said the baron with another unpleasant smile; "we shall be very

good friends notwithstanding your piety. I shall look after you.

Remember six o'clock to-morrow morning at the Hotel Dieu. Be punctual,

and do you hear, Mr Walpole, think of me in your prayers."

This last expression, accompanied as it was by a very significant look,

amounted to a positive insult, and I quitted the library and house of

the baron, fully resolved never to set foot in either of them again.

What an extraordinary delusion did poor H----labour under, in respect of

the character of his friend! Here was a Mentor to form the opinions and

regulate the conduct of a young gentleman stepping into life! Great as

were his talents and acquirements, and much as I might lose by

neglecting to cultivate his friendship, I resigned gladly every

advantage rather than purchase the greatest, with the sacrifice of the

principles which had been so anxiously implanted in my bosom, even from

my cradle. I was hurt and vexed at the result of my interview. Every

thing had promised so well at first. I had been won by the appearance of

the baron, I had been charmed with his discourse, and gratified by the

terms in which he spoke of my future studies, and the help he hoped to

afford me in the prosecution of them. Why had this unfortunate Mr Z----,

and his still more unfortunate book, turned up to discompose the

pleasant vision? But for the mention of his name, and the introduction

of his book, I might have remained for ever in ignorance of the

atheistical opinions which, in my estimation, derogated materially from

the grace which otherwise adorned the teacher's cultivated mind. It is

impossible for communion and hearty fellowship to subsist between

individuals, whose notions on life's most important point lie "far as

the poles asunder." I did not expect, desire, or propose to seek that

they should.

In the evening I joined M'Linnie at his lodgings, and gave him an

account of the meeting.--He laughed at me for my scruples.

"I knew all about it," said Mac, "but hardly thought it worth while to

let you know it. H---- was quite right, too: the baron is not the man

to-day that he was a dozen years ago. He is a rank infidel now; he makes

no secret of the thing, but boasts of it right and left: it is his great

fault. He is an inconsistent fellow. If any one talks about religion, no

matter how proper and fitting the time, he is down upon him at once with

a sneer and a joke; and yet he drags in his own opinions by the neck, at

all seasons, on all occasions, and expects you to say _amen_ to every

syllable he utters."

"He must be very weak," said I.

"Must he?--very well. Then wait till you see him cut for _calculus_, or

perform for _hernia_. Sit with him at the bedside, and hear him at his

lectures. If you think him weak then, you shall be good enough to tell

me what you call _strong_.

"But his principles"----

"Are certainly not in accordance with the Thirty-nine Articles; but the

baron does not profess to teach theology--nor did I come here to take

his creed. So long as he is orthodox in surgery, I make no complaint

against him. I have my own views; and if they are relaxed and out of

order now and then, why, the parson is the man to apply to, and not the

baron. I must say one requires a dose of steel now and then, to keep

right and tight in this bewitching capital."

There was worldly wisdom in the remarks of M'Linnie; and before I

quitted him I was satisfied of the propriety of paying every attention

to the professional instruction of the surgeon, without committing

myself, by visiting him as a friend, to an approval of his detestable

principles; and accordingly, at two minutes to six o'clock, I presented

myself at the hospital on the following morning. Many students were

already in attendance, and precisely at six o'clock the baron himself

appeared. He bowed to the students as a body and honoured me with a

particular notice.

"Eh bien, jeune Chretien!" he said, shaking me by the hand, "have you

prayed for my reformation? It is very remiss of you if you have not done

so. You know I made you yesterday my father confessor."

There was immediately a general laugh from the students--medical

students being, it should be known, the most unblushing parasites on

record.

These words were spoken under the low portico of the building which

forms, with its long ascent of steps, one side of the square in which

the Cathedral of Notre Dame has its principal entrance, and is certainly

not one of the least interesting adjuncts of that magnificent edifice.

We passed without further speech through the range of buildings within,

the professor in our van, and in a minute or two found ourselves in a

spacious, clean, and well-filled ward.

The surgeon took his seat at the foot of the first bed in the sick

chamber, and the students crowded eagerly around him, evidently anxious

not to lose a syllable that should fall from his lips. I shall never

forget the lesson of that morning. The judgment, the penetration, the

unflinching collectedness, and consummate skill of the surgeon,

compelled my warmest admiration. I forgot our ground of disagreement in

the transcendent ability that I beheld. His heart, and mind, and soul,

were given up to his profession, and his success was adequate to the

price paid for its purchase. The baron was, however, a mass of

contradiction. I discovered this before we had been an hour in the ward.

It was clear that he had risen by the sheer strength of great natural

genius, and that he was lamentably wanting in all the agreeable

qualities which spring from early cultivation and sound training. He was

violent, sudden, and irregular in his temper and mode of speaking--when

his temper and speech were directed against any but his patients. He had

no regard to the feelings of men of his own rank; and his language

towards them was rather emphatic, than delicate or well chosen. In his

progress round the ward, he came to the bed of a man suffering from a

diseased leg. He removed the bandage from the part, and asked, "what

fool had tied it up so clumsily;" _the fool_, as he well knew, being the

house surgeon at his side. Again, another practitioner at the hospital

had recommended a particular treatment in a particular case. This

gentleman, the baron's colleague, was referred to as--"a child who had

yet to learn the alphabet of surgery--who would have been laughed at,

twenty years ago, had he prescribed such antiquated nostrums--a weak

child--a mere baby, gentlemen."----"How much," I exclaimed mentally,

time after time, "must this man have altered since H---- parted with him

as his respected friend!" And yet in some regards he was not altered at

all. There was the same consideration for the poor sufferers--the same

attention to their many complaints and wants--the same tenderness and

kind disposition to humour and pacify them, which H---- had dwelt upon

with so much commendation. There was no hurrying from case to case--no

sign of impatience at the reiterated unmeaning queries of the

patients--no coarse jest at _their_ expense--not a syllable that could

wound the susceptibility of the most sensitive. Did one poor fellow

betray an anxiety to take up as little of the baron's time as possible,

and, speaking hurriedly, almost exhaust his little stock of feeble

breath, it was absolutely touching to mark the happy mode in which the

surgeon put the flurried one at ease. Had these creatures, paupers as

they were, been rich and noble--had they, strangers as they were, been

brothers every one, he could not have evinced a tenderer interest on

their behalf--a stronger disposition to do them service. In spite of

myself, I loved the baron for his condescending to these men of low

estate.

It will not be necessary to dwell upon the proceedings of the place: I

could extract from my note-book pages that would delight the medical

reader, necessarily dry and tedious to the uninitiated. Suffice it to

say, that many hours were spent in the surgical wards by this

indefatigable surgeon: every individual case received his best

attention, and was prescribed for as carefully as though a noble fee

waited upon each. The ceremony being at an end, I was about to retire,

agreeably surprised and gratified with all that I had seen.

"Arretez donc," said the baron, noticing my movement, and touching me

upon the arm. "You are not fatigued?"

"Not in the least," I answered.

"Come with me, then."

The baron, full of life and spirits, and with the air of a man whose

day's work was only about to commence, bowed to the students, and

tripped quickly down stairs. I followed as commanded, and the next

moment I was in the baron's cabriolet, driving with that gentleman

rapidly through the streets of Paris.

"Have you courage?" enquired the baron suddenly.

"For what, sir?" I replied.

"To see an operation."

"I have been present at many, sir," said I--"some bad enough, too; and,

I confess, I have been less womanish and weak beholding them than I felt

this morning, witnessing your kindness to those poor creatures."

"Ah, poor creatures, indeed!" repeated the baron in a softer tone than

any I had heard him use. "The poor need kindness, Mr Walpole. It is all

we can do for them. God help them! it is little of that they get.

Poverty is a frightful thing, sir."

There were two circumstances that especially struck me in the delivery

of this short speech. One was, that the eyes of an intrepid operator

filled with tears whilst he adverted to a very commonplace subject; the

other, that a confirmed atheist was inconsistent enough to invoke the

Deity whose very existence he denied.

We drove on, and arrived at the hotel of one of the richest and most

influential noblemen of France. The cabriolet stopped, and the gates of

the hotel were thrown open at the same instant. A lackey, in the hall of

the mansion, was already waiting for the baron, and we were bowed with

much ceremony up the gilded staircase; we reached at last a sumptuously

furnished chamber, where we found three gentlemen in earnest

conversation. They were silent upon our entrance, and advanced, one and

all, with great cordiality to greet the baron. The latter returned their

salute with a distant and haughty politeness, which I thought very

unbecoming.

"We were thinking"---- began one of the party.

"How is the patient?" asked the baron, suddenly interrupting him.

The other shook his head despondingly, and the baron, as it were

instinctively, unlocked a case of instruments, which he had brought into

the room with him from his cabriolet.

"The inflammation has not subsided, then?"

"No."

"All the symptoms as before?"

"All."

"Let us see him."

The gentleman and the baron opened a door and passed into another room.

As the door closed after them, I heard a loud and dismal groan. One of

the two remaining gentlemen then asked me if I had been long in Paris.

I told him.

"Ah, you haven't seen the new opera, then?" said he--just as we should

say, when put to it for conversation--What frightful, or what beautiful

weather this is! Before I could reply, there was another fearful groan

from the adjoining room, but my new acquaintance proceeded without

noticing it.

"You have nothing like our _Academie_ in London, I believe?"

I was about to vindicate the Italian Opera, when the two surgeons again

appeared. The baron in a few words said, that there was nothing to be

done but to operate, and at once, if the life of the patient were to be

spared at all. The three practitioners--for such they were--bowed in

acquiescence, and the baron prepared his instruments.

It is the fashion to speak of medical men slightingly, if not

reproachfully; to accuse them of practising solemn impositions, and of

being, at the best, but so many legalized charlatans. It is especially

the mode of speaking amongst those who will give "the doctor" no rest,

and are not satisfied until they make that functionary the most constant

visitor at their abodes. No one would have dared to breathe one syllable

of disrespect against the surgeon's sacred office, who could have seen

as I did, the operation which the baron performed this day. It has been

done successfully three times within the memory of man; twice by

himself, who first attempted it. It was grand to mark his calm and

intellectual face--to see the hand--armed with the knife that cut for

life or death--firm and unshaken as the mind that urged, the eye that

followed, its unerring course. I could understand the worship that was

paid to this incomparable master, by all that knew his power. Within

five minutes by the clock, and in the sight of men whose breathless

admiration made them oblivious of the throes of the poor sufferer, the

process was completed, and the endangered life restored. The baron left

the fainting invalid, retired for a few seconds, and prescribed. He

returned and felt his pulse--and then, turning to the man with whom he

had first spoken, said--

"Should any thing arise, sir, you will acquaint me with it."

"Unquestionably. He will do well?"

"No doubt of it. Good-morning."

"Good-morning, baron," said the gentleman obsequiously. "His excellency

bore it wonderfully."

"Pretty well for an excellency. We don't notice these things in

paupers--Now, Mr Walpole."

And thereupon the baron turned upon his heels with such manifest

disdain, that he lost half the credit which he had gained by his

previous performance.

We sat for some time silent in the cabriolet. I was bursting to praise

the baron, and yet fearful to speak, lest I should be insulted for my

pains. At last, I became so excited that I could hold out no longer.

"Baron," said I, "I beg your pardon--it was the grandest thing I ever

saw."

"I have seen a grander," said the surgeon frowning, and pursing those

unhappy lips of his again, "much grander, Mr Walpole. I have seen a

nobleman rolling in riches, flattered by his dogs, renowned for his

Christian piety, refusing the supplications of a poor boy, who asked

only for a few coins to carry him through a cold and killing winter. The

refusal might have been the lad's death--but he was refused. It was, as

you say, a grand thing, but the lad has had his revenge to-day."

The baron drove to his own home. At his request I entered his library

with him. He placed some books in my hand, which he believed would be of

service to me; and, as we parted, he said kindly--

"Don't mind my rough ways, Mr Walpole; I was educated in a rough school.

I shall be glad to see you often. I have been disturbed. The father of

that man, whose life, I verily believe, I have saved this day, hunted me

many years ago from his door when I begged from him--condescended to beg

from him--alms which his meanest servant would not have missed, and

which I wanted, to save me from absolute starvation. I have never

forgotten or forgiven him for the act--but I have had my revenge. The

great man's son owes his life to the beggar after all. A good revenge,

_n'est ce pas_?"

I was very much disposed to consider the baron subject to fits of

temporary derangement; but I was wise enough to do nothing more than nod

my head in answer to this appeal, leaving my questioner to interpret the

action as he in his madness might think proper.

There was a hearty shake of the hand, another general invitation to his

house, and a particular invitation to the hospital, where, as the baron

very reasonably observed, "All the knowledge that could serve a man in

after life was hoarded up"--and then I made my bow and took my

departure.

Three months passed like so many days, in the midst of occupation at

once the most inspiriting and satisfactory; and during the whole of that

period, I am bound to acknowledge the treatment of the baron towards me

to have been most generous and kind. In spite of my own resolutions, I

had attached myself to the professor by a feeling of gratitude, which it

was not easy to extinguish or control. His wish to advance me in the

knowledge and understanding of my profession was so earnest, the pains

he took to communicate the most important results of his own hard-earned

experience so untiring, that, had I not felt a heavy debt of

obligation, I must have been a senseless undeserving wretch indeed. The

baron was manifestly well-disposed towards me, and in spite (it might

have been with so strange a character, by very reason) of our religious

differences, he lost no opportunity of bringing me to his side, and of

loading me whilst there with precious gifts. I attended the professor at

the hospital, at the houses of his patients, in his own private study.

He was flattering enough to say that he liked to have me about him--that

he was pleased with my straightforward character--and with the

earnestness with which I worked. I trust it was not his good opinion

alone that induced me, in opposition to my first resolution, by degrees

to associate with the baron, until at length we became intimate and

almost inseparable friends. I would not acknowledge this to my own

conscience, which happily never suffered me to violate a principle, or

yield an inch of righteous ground. The baron persevered in his attacks

upon our sacred religion. I, grown bolder by long familiar acquaintance,

acted as firmly upon the defensive: and I must do myself the justice to

assert, that the soundness of fair argument suffered no injury from the

light weapons of wit and ridicule which my friend had ever at command.

It was a fine morning in the early spring, and I sat with the baron as

usual in his library. On this occasion I was helping him in the

completion of a series of plates, which he was about to publish, in

connexion with a work on cancer--a book that has since made a great

sensation upon the Continent. The engraver had worked from the

professor's preparations under the eye of the latter; but a few slight

inaccuracies had crept into the drawings, and the baron employed me in

the detection of them. We were both fully occupied; I with the

engravings; he with his lecture of the day--and we were both very

silent, when we heard a loud ringing of the porter's bell. The baron at

the same time looked at his watch, and resumed his pen. A note was then

brought to him by his servant. It was read, and an answer given.

"Say I will be there at four o'clock."

"I beg your pardon, sir," said the servant, "but the prince's chasseur

who gave me the note, desired me to add that the prince wished to see

you immediately."

"Very well, sir," answered the baron haughtily. "He has delivered his

master's message--do you deliver mine. I am busy, very busy--and cannot

see the prince till four o'clock. That is the answer."

The servant knew his master, and left the room immediately.

"These insufferable nobles!" exclaimed the baron; "they imagine that

mankind was invented for their pleasure and amusement--to be their

footballs. Does this man think we have nothing better to do than to

humour his fancies, and attend to every ailment that waits upon his

gross appetite. He makes a god of his belly, is punished for his

idolatry, and then whines by the hour to his doctor."

"Is he not ill, then?" I enquired.

"He may be--but that is no reason why my students are to be neglected

for a prince. He must come in his turn, with all the rest. I allow no

distinctions in my practice. Suffering is suffering--the pain of the

peasant is as acute as the smart of the king. Proceed with the drawings,

Mr Walpole."

In less than a quarter of an hour, there was a fresh disturbance. The

servant knocked softly at the door, and entered timidly.

"Here is a dirty woman at the gate, sir," began the man. "I have told

her that you were engaged and couldn't speak to her, but she would not

move until I had brought you this letter. She is a dirty creature, sir."

"Well, you have said that once before," answered the baron taking the

note--if a soiled strip of paper, with blots, erasures, and illegible

characters may deserve that title. The baron endeavoured to read it; but

failing, requested Francois to show the poor woman up.

She appeared, and justified the repetition of Francois. She was indeed

very far from being clean; she had scarcely a rag upon her back--and

seemed, in every way, much distressed.

"Now, my good woman," said the professor very tenderly, "tell me what

it is you want, as quickly as you are able to do it, and I will help you

if it be in my power."

The woman, bursting into tears, proceeded to say that "she resided in

the Quartier St Jacques--that her husband was a water-carrier."

"A what?" asked the professor quickly, as if he had missed the word.

"A water-carrier, sir."

"Go on."

That he had come from Auvergne--had fallen into a dreadful state of

disease through want of nourishment and fuel during the winter--that he

was now lying without a crust of bread or a particle of fire--and that

she was sure he must die, leaving her and her children to be thrown into

the world. She filled up her short narrative with many harrowing

details, and finished by imploring the surgeon to come and save her

husband if he could. "We will pay you, sir, all that we are able--if he

gets to work again: and if he shouldn't, God, I am sure, will not listen

to your prayers the less because you have helped the unfortunate and the

poor."

Before the woman had told her story, the cheeks of the baron were as

pale as her own--his eyes scarcely less moist. He had put his hand to

his pocket, and when the woman ceased--he drew it out again, and

presented her with a crown-piece.

"Go home," said he "with that. Buy bread and fuel. I will be at your

lodging this afternoon."

The woman was about to exclaim.

"Not a syllable!" said her benefactor, preventing her. "If you thank me,

I will do nothing for you. Go your ways now. I cannot accompany you--for

you see I am very busy; but before the day is out, I will prescribe for

your goodman.--Good-by to you--good-by."

The woman went away without another word.

Before she reached the bottom of the stairs, the baron spoke.

"Mr Walpole--pray be kind enough to call her back!"

She came.

"You must not think me harsh now," proceeded the baron, by way of

apology, "I did not wish to be so. I shall do all I can for you, and

your husband will no doubt be soon quite well again. There, keep your

spirits up, and go home and cheer the good fellow. I shall see you

by-and-by--_Adieu, ma chere_."

The professor continued his lecture; but not for five minutes before he

appeared to be very uneasy at his work. He put his pen down, and sat for

a time full of thought; then he rose and paced the room, and then took

up his pen again; at last, he started from his chair and pulled the

bell.

"Francois," said he to the servant, "let the cabriolet be here

immediately. Yes," he continued, as if speaking to himself, "it will be

better to go at once; the man may be seriously ill. His life may be in

danger. It can be done in an hour--there is plenty of time still for the

lecture. We must go and see this poor fellow, Mr Walpole," added the

professor, addressing me. "Come, you shall give me your opinion of the

case."

And the lecture and the engravings were neglected, and we dashed through

the streets towards the Quartier St Jacques, with every chance of

breaking our own necks as well as that of the spirited animal that flew

before the whip of the excited practitioner.

"Well," said I to myself as we alighted, "it may be, Monsieur le Baron,

as you state it, '_the pain of the peasant is as acute as the smart of a

king_.' It is, however, very certain that you do not hold to the

converse of the proposition."

The water-carrier was in truth alarmingly ill, and he was not likely to

remain so much longer, if left to himself; for it was already the

eleventh hour with him. He was living in a filthy hole--lying on a bed

of straw, without the commonest necessaries of life. The man had become

diseased through want and confinement--that cause and origin of half the

complaints to which the human frame is subject; lack of wholesome food

and pure air. The baron perceived instantly that nothing could be done

for the unhappy fellow in his present abode, and he therefore insisted

upon his being removed at once to a _maison de sante_.

"I can't walk," said the man gruffly.

"No, but you can be carried in a coach, I suppose," replied the baron in

a similar tone, "if I wish it." "Let him be dressed," he continued,

turning to the wife. "I will send a coach for him in half an hour--and

take charge of him until he is better. That will buy you some bread for

the present," and he gave another crown and hastened away. In the

afternoon the baron attended the patient again at the _maison de sante_.

He ordered him a bath, and prescribed medicines. For a month he visited

him daily; and he did not quit him until he was convalescent. Nor

then--for upon the day of the poor fellow's discharge, he presented him

with a horse and water-cart, and a purse containing five louis-d'or.

"Take care of the money," said the charitable donor, "do not be

extravagant. If you are ill--come to me always."

The water-carrier--a bluff, sturdy fellow in his way--would have thanked

the baron could he have kept quiet; but he stood roaring like a child,

perfectly overcome with the kindness he had received. It was some months

afterwards that Francois announced two visitors. When they appeared, I

recognised my old acquaintance the water-carrier, grown hale and hearty,

accompanied by a stranger, of the same condition in life as himself, and

looking very ill.

"_Ah, mon ami_!" exclaimed the baron, shaking him by the hand, "how does

the world use you?"

"Look at me," answered the carrier--"just look at me."

"Ay, ay," said the baron. "Flesh enough upon you now! Who is your

friend?"

"Ah, it's about him I came! He is very ill, isn't he? He is a

water-carrier, too. He was going to another doctor, but I wouldn't allow

it. No, no--that wouldn't have been the thing after all you have done

for me. I hope I know better. He is very bad, and hasn't got a sixpence

in the world."

I could not help smiling, at this original display of gratitude--and the

baron laughed outright; his heart grew glad within him as he answered,

pressing the honest carrier's hardy hand--

"Right--right--quite right! _Mon enfant_, bring them all to me!"

M'Linnie, who was not honoured by the baron's confidence, seemed to be

well acquainted with his peculiarities. I mentioned to him his

extraordinary treatment of the water-carriers, and attributed it all,

without hesitation, to downright insanity.

"Not that exactly," said Mac. "It is caprice, and the inconsistency of

human nature. He is strongly attached to all _Auvergnats_, and to

water-carriers in particular. His predilection that way is well known in

Paris. Perhaps his father was a water-carrier--or his first love a girl

from Auvergne. Who can tell what gave rise to the partiality in a mind

that is full of bias and contradiction!"

Contradiction indeed! I had remarked enough, and yet nothing at all in

comparison with that which was to follow. Up to the present time I had

been only puzzled and amused by the frolics and irregularities of the

baron. I had yet to be staggered and confounded by the most palpable and

barefaced act of inconsistency that ever lunatic conceived and executed.

The winter and spring had passed, and summer came, placing our time more

at our disposal. Summer is the dissector's long vacation. I permitted

myself to take recreation, and to seek amusement in the many public

resorts of this interesting capital. One morning I attended the baron at

the hospital, and returned with him to his abode. We sat together for an

hour, and I distinctly remember that on this occasion the unbeliever was

even more witty than usual on the subject which he was ever ready to

introduce, with, I am sorry to say, no better object than that of

turning it into ridicule and contempt. I left him, irritated and annoyed

at his behaviour, and tried to forget it in the crowds of people who

were thronging the gay streets on one of the gayest mornings of the

year. I hardly know why I directed my steps towards the _Place St

Sulpice_, or why, having reached it, I lingered, gazing at the church

which has its site there. I had a better reason for quitting it with

precipitation; for whilst I stood musing, I became suddenly aware of the

presence of my friend the baron. He did not see me, and I was not

anxious to begin _de novo_ the disagreeable discussion of the morning.

As I turned away from the church, however, I looked instinctively back,

and was much surprised to behold the baron glancing very suspiciously

about him, and appearing most anxious to avoid public observation. I was

mentally debating whether such was really the fact, or whether the idea

was suggested by my own clandestine movement, when to my unaffected

astonishment the baron put an end to all doubt by making one rapid march

towards the church, and then rushing in--looking neither to the right

nor left--behind nor before him. This was truly too extraordinary a

circumstance to witness without further enquiry. I immediately retraced

my steps, and followed the atheist into the house, where surely _he_

could have no lawful business to transact. If my surprise had been great

without the sacred edifice, what was it within, and at that particular

portion of it known by the designation of _the Chapel of the Virgin

Mary_, at which I beheld, questioning my own senses, my unaccountable

friend, this exceedingly erratic baron--upon his knees--in solemn

prayer! Yes, kneeling in low humility, and praying audibly, with a

devotion and an awful earnestness that could not be surpassed. He

remained upon his knees, and he persevered in his prayers until the

conclusion of the service, and then he bestowed his alms--performing all

things with an expression of countenance and gravity of demeanour, such

as I knew him to wear only at the table upon which he had achieved the

most celebrated of his surgical victories.

"Mad, mad!" I exclaimed aloud, "nothing short of it." Why, such glaring

wholesale hypocrisy had not been committed since Satan first introduced

the vice into Paradise. What atrocity, what barefaced blasphemy! It was

the part of a Christian and a friend to attribute the extravagant

proceedings of the baron to absolute insanity, and to nothing else; and

I did so accordingly, alarmed for the safety of the unfortunate

professor, and marvelling what unheard-of act would next be perpetrated,

rendering it incumbent upon society to lock the lunatic up for life.

Why, his lips were hardly relieved of the pollution which had fallen

from them in my presence; and could he in his senses, with his reason

not unhinged, dare to offend his Maker doubly by the mockery of such

prayers as _he_ could offer up! What was his motive--what his end? That

he was anxious for concealment was evident. Had he courted observation,

I might have supposed him actuated by some far-sighted scheme of policy;

and yet his rash and straightforward temperament rendered him incapable

of any stratagem whatever. No, no--look at the thing as I would, there

was no accounting for this most perplexing anomaly except on the ground

of mental infirmity. Alas, poor baron!

When the service was at an end, I took up a position in the street near

the church, in order to observe the next movement of the devotee, quite

prepared for any thing that might happen. I was disappointed. The baron,

looking very cheerful and very happy, made his appearance from the

temple which he had so recently profaned, and walked steadily and

quietly away. I followed him, and in the excitement of the moment was

about to approach and accost him, when he suddenly turned into a narrow

lane, and I lost sight of him.

Before I saw the baron again, I had made up my mind to keep my own

counsel, and to give him no hint of my having discovered and watched

him. The reasons for silence were twofold. First, I hoped, by keeping my

eye upon the professor, to learn more of his character than I yet knew;

and, in the second place, I did not wish to be regarded as a spy by an

individual of violent passions, whom I could not conscientiously

consider responsible for his actions.

It so happened that, on the evening of this very day, the baron held a

_conversazione_ in his rooms, to which the first people of Paris, both

in rank and talent, were invited. I, who had the _entree_, was present

of course, and I was likewise amongst the first of the arrivals. With

me, the chief physician of the Hotel Dieu entered the _salon_.

The surgeon and the physician shook hands; and, after a word or two, the

latter asked abruptly--

"By the way, baron, what were you doing at St Sulpice this morning? I

saw you quitting the church."

"Oh!" said the baron, without changing colour or moving a muscle,

although I blushed at his side to my very forehead; "Oh! a sick priest,

placed under my care by the Duchess d'Angouleme--nothing more."

"Well, I could hardly believe that you had turned saint--that is the

truth."

"Not yet--not yet!" added the baron, laughing out. "This is to be the

saint," he continued, tapping me on the shoulders. "St Walpole! That

will look very fine in the calendar! However, my friend, if they attempt

to canonize you whilst I live, I'll act the part of devil's advocate,

and contest your right of admission, if it is only to punish you for

your opposition to me in this world. So take care of yourself, and read

up your divinity."

And with these words the unmitigated hypocrite, chuckling at my apparent

confusion, advanced to the door, and welcomed his crowding visitors.

Upon the following day I repaired to St Sulpice--but I did not see the

baron. I went again and again, with no better success. For a week I

attended the service daily--still no baron. Afterwards I went twice

a-week. At the end of two months I contented myself with one visit

weekly--still no baron. I did not like to give up the watch. I could not

tell _why_ I felt sure of meeting with him again; yet so I felt, and I

was curious to know how far he carried his madness, and what object he

proposed to himself in the prosecution and indulgence of his monomania.

Three months elapsed, and I was at length paid for my perseverance. For

a second time I saw the baron enter the church--assist devoutly at the

celebration of mass at the chapel of the Virgin Mary--repeat his

prayers, and offer up his alms. There was the same solemnity of bearing

during the ceremony, the same cheerful self-possession at its

completion. A more methodical madness there could not be! I was

determined this time not to lose sight of my gentleman, without

obtaining at least a clue to his extraordinary behaviour. As soon as the

service as over, he prepared for his departure. Before he could quit the

church, however, I crossed it unperceived by him, and walked straight up

to the sacristan.

"Who is that gentleman?" I asked, pointing to the surgeon.

"Monsieur F----," he answered readily enough--so readily, that I hardly

knew what to ask next. "A regular attendant, sir," the sacristan

continued, in an impressive tone of approbation.

"Indeed!" said I.

"Ay. I have been here twelve years next Easter, and four times regularly

every year has monsieur come to hear this mass."

"It is very strange!" I said, speaking to myself.

"Not at all," said the sacristan. "It is very natural, seeing that he is

himself the _founder of it_!"

Worse and worse! The inconsistency of the reviler of things sacred, was

becoming more barefaced and unpardonable. "Let him taunt me again!" I

exclaimed, walking homeward; "let him mock me for my weak and childish

notions, as he calls them, and attempt to be facetious at the expense of

all that is holy, and good, and consolatory in life. Let him attempt it,

and I will annihilate him with a word!" When, however, I grew more

collected, I began to understand how, by such proceeding, I might shoot

very wide of my mark, and give my friend an advantage after all. He had

explained his presence at the church to his colleague by attributing it

to a visit paid to a sick priest there. He should have no opportunity to

prevaricate if I once challenged him. Now, he might have the effrontery

to deny what I had seen with my own eyes, and could swear to. By lying

in wait for him again, and accosting him whilst he was in the very act

of perpetrating his solemn farce, I should deprive him of all power of

evasion and escape. And so I determined it should be.

In the meanwhile I kept my own counsel, and we went on as usual. I

learned from the sacristan when the baron was next expected at the mass,

and, until that day, did not present myself again at the Place St

Sulpice. Before that time arrived, there arose a touching incident,

which, as leading to important consequences, deserves especial notice.

It was growing late one evening of this same summer--the surgeon was

fatigued with the labours of the day--I was on the point of leaving

him--he of retiring to rest, when Francois announced a stranger. An old

man appeared. He was short, and very thin; his cheeks were pale--his

hair hoary. Benignity beamed in his countenance, on which traces of

suffering lingered, not wholly effaced by piety and resignation. There

was an air of sweetness and repose about the venerable stranger, that at

the first sight gained your respect, if not regard. When he entered the

apartment he bowed with ceremony--and then waited timidly for

countenance from the baron.

"What is the matter with you?" asked the surgeon roughly.

"Allow me to be seated," said the stranger, drawing his breath with

difficulty, and speaking with a weak and tremulous voice. "I am very

tired."

The baron, as if rebuked, rose instantly, and gave his visitor a chair.

"I am very old," continued the latter, "and my poor legs are weary."

"What ails you?"

"Permit me," said the stranger. "I am the priest of a small village very

far from Paris."

"Humph!" ejaculated the surgeon.

"Two years ago I had a swelling in my neck, which the doctor of our

village thought of no importance; but it burst at last, and for a long

time I was kept to my bed a useless idle man. With four parishes and no

assistant; there lay a heavy weight upon my conscience--but God is good,

sir"----

"Show me your throat!" exclaimed the baron, interrupting him.

"And my people, too," proceeded the old man, preparing to obey the

surgeon's command--"my people were very considerate and kind. When I got

a little better, they offered, in order to lighten my labours, to come

to one church every Sunday. But it was not fair, sir. They are working

men, and have much to do, and Sunday is their only day of rest. It was

not right that so many should resign their comfort for the sake of one;

and I could not bear to think of it."

All this was uttered with such perfect natural simplicity, that it was

impossible not to feel at once great interest in the statement of the

speaker. My attention was riveted. Not so the baron's, who answered with

more impatience than he had ever used towards the water-carriers--

"Come to the point, sir."

"I was coming, sir," replied the old priest mildly; "I trust I don't

fatigue you. Whilst I was in doubt as to what it was best to do, a

friend strongly recommended me to come to Paris, and to consult you. It

was a thing to consider, sir. A long journey, and a great expense! We

have many poor in our district, and it is not lawful to cast away money

that rightfully belongs to them. But, when I became reduced as you see

me, I could not regard the money as thrown away on such an errand; and

so I came. I arrived only an hour ago, and have not delayed an instant."

The surgeon, affecting not to listen to the plaintive recital of the

priest, proceeded very carefully to examine his disease. It was an

alarming one; indeed, of so aggravated a character, that it was

astonishing to see the sufferer alive after all that he must have

undergone in its progress.

"This disease must kill you," said the baron--brutally, I thought,

considering the present condition of the man, his distance from home,

friends, and all the natural ties that render calamity less frightful

and insupportable. I would gladly have said a word to soften the pain

which the baron had inflicted; but it would have been officious, and

might have given offence.

The old priest, however, expressed no anxiety or regret upon hearing the

verdict pronounced against him. With a firm and quiet hand he replaced

the bandages, and he then drew a coarse bag from his pocket, from which

he extracted a five franc piece.

"This is," he said calmly, "a very trifling fee, indeed, for the opinion

of so celebrated a surgeon; but, as I have told you, sir, the

necessities of my poor are great. I cannot afford to spend more upon

this worthless carcass. I an very grateful to you for your candour, sir.

It will be my own fault now, if I die unprepared."

"It is the profession of a priest," said the baron, "to affect stoicism.

You do not feel it."

"I do not, sir," replied the man respectfully. "I did not hear the awful

truth you just now told me as a stoic would. Pardon me for saying, that

it might have been communicated less harshly and abruptly to a weak old

man; I do not wish to speak offensively."

The baron blushed for shame.

"I am a human being, sir," continued the priest, "and must feel as other

men. Death is a terrible abyss between earth and heaven; but the land is

not the less lovely beyond it."

"You speak as you were taught?" said the baron.

"Yes."

"And as you teach?"

"Yes."

"And you profess to feel all this?"

"I profess to be a humble minister of Christ--imperfect enough, Heaven

knows, sir! I ask your pardon for complaining at your words. They did

not shock me very much. How should they, when I came expecting them?

Farewell, sir; I will return to Auvergne, and die in the midst of my

people."

"Stay!" exclaimed the baron, touched and softened by the one magical

word. "Come back! I admire your calmness--I respect your powers of

endurance. Can you trust them to the end?"

"I am frail, and very weak, sir," replied the priest. "I would bear much

to save my life. I do not wish to die. I have many things unfinished

yet."

"Listen to me. There is but one means of saving you; and mark--that

perhaps may fail--a long, painful, and, it may be, unsuccessful

operation. Are you prepared to run the risk?"

"Is there a chance, sir?"

"Yes--but a remote one. Were I the priest of Auvergne I would take that

chance."

"It is enough, sir," said the old man. "Let it be done. I will undergo

it, with the help of God, as their pastor should, for the sake of my

dear children in Auvergne."

The baron sat at his desk, and wrote a few lines--

"Present this note," said he, "at the _Salle St Agnes_ in the _Hotel

Dieu_. Go at once. The sisters there will take care that you want for

nothing. Take rest for a day or two, and I will see what afterwards may

be done for you."

The priest thanked the baron many times for his kindness--bowed

respectfully, and retired. The free-thinking surgeon sat for a few

minutes after his departure, silent and thoughtful.

"Happy man!" he exclaimed at last, sighing as the words escaped him.

"Happy, sir?" said I enquiringly.

"Yes! happy, Mr Walpole. False and fabulous as the system is on which he

builds, is he not to be envied for the faith that buoys him up so well

through the great sea of trouble, as your poet justly calls this

pitiable world! Could one _purchase_ this all-powerful faith, what price

would be too dear for such an acquisition? Who would not give all that

he possesses here to grasp that hope and anchor?"

"And yet, sir, you might have it. The gift is freely offered, and you

spurn it."

"No such thing!" replied the surgeon hastily. "I may NOT have it. This

weak yet amiable priest is content to take for granted what every

rational mind rejects without fair proofs. He receives as a postulate

that which I must have demonstrated. I try to solve the problem, and the

first links of the argument lead to an absurdity."

"The weak man, then, has reason to be thankful?" said I.

"Ay, ay! I grant you that. He cannot tell how much!"

"How differently, sir, do things appear to different men! The very

endurance of this old man, founded as it is upon his faith, is to me

proof sufficient of the truth and heavenly origin of that faith."

"You talk, Mr Walpole, like a schoolboy, who knows nothing of religion

out of his catechism--and nothing of the world beyond his school walls.

If the ability to bear calamity with fortitude shall decide the

genuineness of the creed, there is your North American Indian or Hindoo

nearer to truth and heaven than the Christian. So much for your '_proof

sufficient_' as you term it."

This discussion, like all the rest, for all useful purposes ended as it

began, leaving us both just where it had found us--our tempers rather

than our views suffering in the conflict. Two or three times I was

tempted to rattle out a volley of indignation at his amazing and

unparalleled effrontery, and of calling him to account for his

turpitude; but my better judgment withheld me, bidding me reserve my

blows until they should fall unerringly and fatally upon his defenceless

head.

In the meanwhile the good old priest carried his mild and resigned

spirit with him into the hospital. He was received with kindness, and

treated with especial care, chiefly on account of the recommendation of

the baron, who was interested in the unfortunate pastor to a

greater extent than he cared to acknowledge. The day for the

operation--postponed from time to time--at length arrived. It was

performed. The process was long and painful, but the patient never

uttered a complaint: his cries were wrung from him in the extremity of

torture and physical helplessness. The result was successful. One knew

not which to admire most--the Christian magnanimity of the patient, or

the triumphant skill of the operator: both were perfect. When the

anxious scene was over, the surgeon shook the priest by the hand

tenderly and encouragingly, and with his handkerchief wiped the

sweat-drops from his aged brow. He saw him afterwards carefully removed

to his bed, and for half an hour watched at his side, until, exhausted,

the sufferer fell to sleep. During the slow recovery of the invalid,

_his_ bed was the first visited by the surgeon in his daily rounds. He

lingered there long after his services were needed, and listened with

the deepest attention to the accounts which the priest gave of his mode

of life, and of the condition of his dear flock, far away in Auvergne.

When at length the convalescent man was able to quit his bed, the baron,

to the surprise of all who knew him, would take him by the arm, and give

him his support, as the enfeebled creature walked slowly up and down the

ward. It was the feeling act of an affectionate son. Then the surgeon

made eager enquiries, which the priest as eagerly answered; and they

grew as friendly as though they had been well acquainted from their

infancy. Weeks passed away; the priest was at last discharged, cured;

and, with prayers mingling with tears of gratitude, he took leave of his

benefactor, and returned in joy to his native village.

It was exactly a week after his departure, that the day arrived upon

which the sacristan led me to expect a meeting with the baron at the

church of Saint Sulpice. Resolved to confront this incarnation of

contradiction at the very scene of his unseemly vagaries, I did not fail

to be punctual. As I entered the street, I espied the baron a few yards

before me, walking briskly towards the entrance of the sacred building.

I followed him. He hurried into the church, and took his accustomed

place. I kept close upon him; and, with a fluttering heart, seated

myself at his side. My cheek burned with nervous agitation, but I did

not look towards my adversary. His eye, however, was upon me. I felt it,

and was sensible of his steady, long, and, as it seemed, passionless

gaze. He did not move, or betray any symptom of surprise. As on the

previous occasions, he proceeded solemnly to prayer; and when the

ceremony was completed, he, as usual, offered up his alms. As the

service drew to its close, my own anxiety became intense, and my

situation almost insupportable. He rose--I did the same;--he walked

leisurely away--I, giddy with excitement reeled after him. I was not to

be shaken from my purpose, and I accosted him on the church's threshold.

"Baron!" I exclaimed.

"Mr Walpole!" he replied, perfectly unmoved.

"I am surprised to see you here, sir."

"You are NOT," answered the baron, still most placidly; "you came

expressly to meet me; you have been here twice before. Why do you desire

to hide that fact? Can a Christian, Mr Walpole, play the hypocrite as

well as other men?"

"I cannot understand you," I said, bewildered by his imperturbable

coolness; "you laugh at religion--you mock me for respecting it, and yet

you come here for prayer. You do not believe in God, and you assist

devoutly at mass!"

"It is a lovely morning, Mr Walpole--we have half an hour to spare--give

me your arm!"

Perfectly puzzled and confounded by the collected manner of the baron, I

placed my arm mechanically in his, and suffered him to conduct me

whethersoever he would. We walked in silence for some distance, passed

into the meanest quarter of the city, and reached a miserable and

squalid street. The baron pointed to the most wretched house in the

lane, and bade me direct my eye especially to its sixth story.

"Mark it well," said he, "you see a window there to which a line is

fixed with recently washed linen?"

"I do," I answered.

"In the room--the small close hole to which that window hardly brings

air and light, I passed months of my life. The mass at which you have

three times watched me, is connected with it, and with occurrences that

had their rise there. I was the occupant of that garret--it seems but

yesterday since I wanted bread there."

The surgeon was unmanned. He kept his eye upon the melancholy window

until emotion blinded it, and permitted him to see no longer. He stood

transfixed for a second or two, and then spoke quickly.

"Mr Walpole, poverty is horrible! I have courage for any extremity but

that. Pain I have borne--shrieks and moans I have listened to unmoved,

whilst I stood by labouring to remove them; but when I recall the

moments in which I have languished for a crust of bread, and known

mankind to be my enemy--as though, being poor, I was a felon--all hearts

steeled against me--All hearts, did I say?" added the speaker suddenly

checking himself--"I lie; had it been so, I should not have been here to

tell the tale."

The baron paused, and then resumed.

"High as the rank is, Mr Walpole, to which I have attained; brilliant as

my career has been, and I acknowledge my success with gratitude--believe

me, there is not a famished wretch who crawls through the sinks of this

overgrown metropolis, that suffers more than I have suffered, has

bitterer hours than I have undergone. In this city of splendour and

corruption, at whose extremes are experienced the most exquisite

enjoyment and the most crushing and bitter endurance, I have passed

through trials which have before now overborne and killed the stoutest

hearts, and would have annihilated mine, but for the unselfish love of

him whose business took me to the church this day. Misery, in all its

aggravated forms, has been mine. Want of money--of necessary

clothing--hunger--thirst; such things have been familiar to me. In that

room, and in the depth of the hard winter, I have for hours given warmth

to my benumbed fingers with the breath which absolute want enabled me to

draw only with difficulty and pain."

"Is it possible!" I involuntarily exclaimed.

"You believe that human strength is unequal to such demands. It is

natural to think so; and yet I speak the truth. My parents, Mr Walpole,

humble and poor, but good and loving, sent me to Paris with all the

money they could afford for my education. I was ambitious, and deemed it

more than enough for my purpose. When half my time was spent here,

unhappily for me both father and mother were carried off by a malignant

fever. It was heavy blow, and threatened my destruction; threatened it,

however, but for a moment. I had determined to arrive at eminence; and

when does the determination give way in the breast of him who feels and

knows his power equal to his aim? I had a brother, to whom I wrote,

telling him of my situation, and asking him for the loan of a few

louis-d'or until my studies were completed, when I promised to repay the

debt with interest. He sent me the quarter of the sum for which I had

begged, with a long cold letter of remonstrance, bidding me give up my

profession, and apply myself to the humbler pursuits of my family. I

returned to my brother both money and letter, and the day on which I did

so saw me without a meal. I had not a farthing in the world. Had not a

woman who lodged in a room below given me a crust of bread, I must have

committed crime to assuage the cries of nature. How I existed for days,

I no longer remember. But I remember well hearing of a rich nobleman,

renowned for his wealth and piety, and for all the virtues which the

world confers upon the possessor of vast estates. In a moment of

enthusiasm and mistaken reliance, I sat down and penned a petition to

this great personage. I spoke as an intellectual man to an intellectual

man; as one working his difficult way through obscurity and trouble to

usefulness and honour--and requiring only a few crumbs from the rich

man's table to be at ease, and happy at his toil. I begged in abject

humility for those crumbs, and received a lying and cold-blooded excuse

instead of them. I crouched at his gate with a spirit worn by anxiety

and apprehension, and his slaves hunted me away from it. You have passed

through that same gate with me; you were witness of my triumph at the

bedside of his child!"

"You mean his excellency--the operation?"

"I do."

"How little the rich," said I, "know of the misery, the privations,

endured by those who in poverty acquire the knowledge that is to benefit

mankind so largely. How ignorant are they of their trials!"

"If you would know of the ignorance, the folly, and the vice of the

rich," proceeded the baron, always at home upon this his favourite

subject, "you must listen to an endless tale. Ever willing and eager to

detract from the merits of the man of science, and to attribute to him

the assumption of powers beyond human grasp--and ever striving to drag

down the results of his long and patient study to the level of their own

brutish ignorance--they are made the sport, the tools, and playthings of

every charlatan and trickster, as they should be. You shall be

satisfied, Mr Walpole, when you see the men who treat you with scorn and

contumely, pulled like puppets by a wire, and made to dance to any tune

the piper listeth. Hope nothing from the rich."

"And from the poor, sir?"

"Every thing," said the baron, almost solemnly. "From their hearts shall

spring the gratitude that will cheer you in your course, and solace you

in your gloom. Fame, and the grateful attachment of my humble friends,

have furnished me with a victory which the gold of the king could not

purchase. But we forget Saint Sulpice. I am not a hypocrite, as you

judge me, Mr Walpole. Be witness yourself if my presence there this day

has proved me one. Refused and cast away by this nobleman, I had nothing

to do but to dispose for a trifle of a few articles of linen which were

still in my possession. I sold them for a song, and believing failure to

be impossible, still struggled on. In that room I dwelt, living for days

upon nothing richer than bread and water, and regarding my little money

with the agony of a miser, as every demand diminished the small store.

From morn till night I laboured. I almost passed my life amongst the

dead. Well was it for me, as it proved, that my necessities drove me to

the dead-house to forget hunger, and obtain eleemosynary warmth.

Dismissed at dusk from this temporary home, I returned to the garret for

my crust, and carried the book which I had borrowed to the common

passage of the house, from whose dim lamp I received the glimmer that

served me to read, and to sustain the incensed ambitious spirit that

would not quell within me. The days glanced by quicker than the

lightning. I could not read enough; I could not acquire knowledge

sufficient, in that brief interval of days, between the acquisition of

my little wealth and the spending of my last farthing. The miserable

moment came. I was literally penniless, and without the means of

realizing any thing. For a week I retained possession of my room through

the charity of my landlord, and I was furnished with two loaves by a

good fellow who lived in the same house, and who proffered his

assistance so kindly, so generously, and well, that I received his

benefaction only that I might not give him pain by a refusal. The second

week of charity had already begun, when, entering my cold and hapless

room in my return from the hospital, I was detained at the door by

hearing my name pronounced in a loud and angry tone. I listened with a

sickening earnestness and recognized the voice of my landlord and that

of the good neighbour in high discussion. Something had been said which

much offended the latter; for the words which I caught from him were

those of remonstrance and reproach.

"'For shame, for shame!' said he, 'you have children of your own, and

they may need a friend one day. Think of them before you do so hard a

thing.'

"'I do think of them,' replied the landlord sharply; 'and, that they

mayn't starve, I must keep my matters straight.'

"'Give him another week or two. You will not feel it. I'll undertake to

_keep_ him. It isn't much, Heaven knows! that I can do for him; but at a

pinch, man should make shift for man. Say you'll do it!'

"'I have told you he must go. I do not say one thing and mean another.'

"'Yes, you do, Lagarde,' continued the persevering lodger. 'You say your

prayers daily and tell Heaven how thankful you are for all it does for

you. Now, _that_ you cannot mean, if you turn a helpless brother from

your doors, who must die of want if you and I desert him. Come, think

again of it. Recollect how the poor lad works--how he is striving and

striving day after day. He will do well at last, and pay us back for

all.'

"There was no doubt as to the individual--the subject of this argument.

He stood listening to his doom, and far, far more grateful to the good

creature who pleaded his cause than distressed by the obstinacy which

pronounced his banishment. I was not kept long in suspense. I retreated

to my den, and sat down in gloomy despair. A loud knock at the door

roused me, and the indignant pride which possessed me melted at once

into humility and love when I beheld the faithful Sebastian--my

sympathizing neighbour.

"'You are to go,' he said bluntly; 'you are to leave this house

to-morrow.'

"'I know it,' I answered; 'I am prepared to go this instant.'

"'And whither?'

"'Into the street,' said I; 'any where--it matters not.'

"'Oh yes! it matters much,' replied my visitor; 'it would not matter to

me, or to your landlord. We are but day-labourers, whom nobody would

miss. You have great things before you: you will do, if you are not

crushed on the way. I am sure of it, and you shall not be deserted.'

"'What do you mean?' I asked.

"'Listen to me. Don't be offended. I am a poor man, and an ignorant one;

but I respect learning, and feel for the distressed. You leave this

house to-morrow; so do I. You seem to have no friends; I am friendless

too. I am a foundling. I never knew either father or mother. I am a

water-carrier, and I come from Auvergne. That is my history. Why should

we not seek a lodging together? You don't regret leaving this place; no

more do I. I won't disturb you. You shall study as long as you like, and

have me to talk to when you are tired: that is--if it is quite

agreeable, and you won't be ashamed of me.'

"'You know,' said I, 'that I am in a state of beggary.'

"'I know,' he answered, 'that you are not flush of capital just now; but

I have a little in my pocket, and can work for more. If you are not too

proud to borrow a trifle from me now, I sha'n't be too proud to have it

back again when you get rich. Don't let me prate, for I am rough and

unhandy at it; but give me your hand like an honest man, and say,

"Sebastian, I will do as you wish me.'"

"My heart glowed with a streaming fire, and I grasped the extended palm

of my preserver. 'Sebastian,' I exclaimed, 'I will do as you wish me. I

will do more. I will make you independent. I will slave to make you

happy. It can be done--I feel it can--and you may trust me.'

"'You'll do your best, I know,' he answered; 'and you'll do wonders, or

I am much mistaken.'

"Upon the following morning we wandered through the city, and before

nightfall obtained shelter. To this unselfish creature, and to the

sacrifices which he made for me, I owe every thing. We had been together

but a few days when he drew from me a statement of my position and

future prospects--drew it with a delicacy and tenderness that looked

lovely indeed from beneath his ragged robes. Now this poor fellow, like

me--like all of us--had his ambition, and a darling object in the far

distance to attain. He had for months stinted himself of many comforts,

that he might add weekly to a sum which he had saved for the purchase of

a horse and water-cart. He was already master of a few hundred francs;

and his earnings, small as they were, permitted him to keep up the hope

which had supported him through many hardships. No sooner, however, did

he gather from my words the extent of my necessities, than he determined

to forego the dearest wish of his life in order to secure my advancement

and success. I remonstrated with him; but I might as well have spoken to

stone. He would not suffer me to speak; but threatened, if I refused

him, to throw his bag of savings without delay into the _Seine_. I

ceased to oppose him, accepted his noble offer, and vowed to devote

myself from that time forward to the raising up of my deliverer. The

money of Sebastian supplied me with books, enabled me to pass my

examinations. Be sure I did not slacken in my exertions. Idleness was

fraud while the sweat from the brow of the water-carrier poured so

freely for my sake. I revered him as a father, not before I had myself

become the object of his affections--the recipient of the love which he

had never been conscious of before, foundling that he was, and without

another human tie! He grew proud of me, prouder and prouder every day--I

must be well dressed--I must want for nothing; no, though he himself

wanted all things. He was assured of my future eminence, and this was

enough for him; and my spirit well responded to his own. I knew my

capacity; I felt my strength. I was aware of the ability that floated in

the world, and did not fear to bring my own amongst it. What could a

mind undertake from which mine would shrink? What application could be

demanded to which I was not equal--prepared--eager to submit? Where lay

my difficulty? I saw none: or if I did for an instant, it was

exterminated before the imperious resolution I had formed to exalt and

enrich my beloved and loving benefactor. Tender as a parent to me, this

incomparable man was at the same time diligent and attentive as a

domestic. He would permit me to do nothing to impede the easy and

natural course of study. He shamed me by his affectionate assiduity, but

silenced me ever by referring to the _Future_, when he looked, he

confessed, for a repayment for all his care and love. What could I say

of do in answer to this appeal? What but reiterate the vow which I had

taken, never to desert him, and to fight my way upwards that he might

share the glory he had earned. A day arrived when I was compelled for a

time to leave him; for I had been received as _interne_ at the Hotel

Dieu. It was hard parting, especially for the poor water-carrier, who

dreaded losing sight of me for ever. I gave him an assurance of my

constancy; and consoled him by the information that another and last

examination yet awaited me, for which a certain sum of money would be

required. He promised to have it ready by the hour, and conjured me to

take all care of myself--and to learn to love religion; for I must tell

you, Sebastian was a pious man--a conscientious Christian.

"Once at the hospital, I sought profitable employment, and obtained it.

In the course of a few months I had earned a sum--dearer, more valuable

to me than all I have since acquired. It was insignificant in itself,

but it purchased for my Sebastian his long wished-for treasure--the

horse and water-cart. I took it to him; and when I approached him, I had

not a word to say, for my grateful heart was in my throat strangling my

utterance. He threw his arms about my neck, cried, laughed, thanked,

scolded, blessed, and reproached me, all in the wildness and delirium of

his delight. 'Why did you do it?' said he, 'oh it was kind and loving

in you!--very kind and foolish--and wrong, and generous, and

extravagant--dear, good, naughty boy! I am very angry with you; but I

love you for it dearly. How you are getting on! I knew you would. I said

so from the first. You will do wonders--you will be rich at last. You

want no man's help--you have done it all yourself.'

"'No, Sebastian!' I exclaimed, 'you have done it for me.'

"'Don't deceive me--don't flatter me,' he answered. 'I have been able to

do very little for you--not half what I wished. You would have been

great without me. I have looked upon you, and loved you as my own boy,

and all that was selfishness.'

"We dined and spent the evening of the day together. Life has had no

hours like those before or since. They were real, fresh,

substantial--such as youth remembers vividly when death and suffering

have shaken the foundations of the world, and covered the past with

mistiness and cloud. The excitement of the time, or the privations of

former years--or I know not what--threw the good Sebastian shortly after

this day upon a bed of sickness. He never rose from it again. He was not

rewarded as he should have been for all his sacrifices--for all the love

he had expended upon his grateful foster-child. He did not live to

witness my success--he did not see the completion of the work he had

begun. In spite of all my efforts to save his precious life, he sank,

and drew his latest breath in these devoted arms. I lost more than a

father."

The baron paused, his lips were borne down by a tremulous motion: he

took my arm, and urged me gently from the spot. We walked for some

distance in silence. Collecting himself again, he proceeded:--

"Sebastian, as I have told you, was a pious man. In truth, his faith was

boundless. He worshipped and adored the Virgin Mary as he would have

loved his own natural mother, had he known her. He was aware of my

unbelief, and had often spoken to me on the subject as a father might,

in accents of entreaty and regret. Whilst he was ill he gave me all the

money he had, and earnestly requested me to spare nothing to secure for

him the consolations of the Church. I obeyed him. I caused masses to be

said for him. I procured for him the visits of his priest. I left

nothing undone to give him peace and joy. Would it not have been

monstrous had I acted otherwise? He was morbidly anxious for the future:

he, righteous man, who was as pure in spirit, as guileless, as an

infant! I alone followed him to the grave; and after I had seen his

sacred dust consigned to earth, I crawled home with a heart almost

broken with its grief. I hid myself in my room for the day; and before I

quitted it again, devised a mode of testifying my gratitude to the

departed--one most acceptable to his wishes, had he lived to express

them. I remembered that he had neither friend nor relation--that I lived

his representative. He had spoken during his illness of the masses which

are said for the repose of the souls of the dead--spoken of them with a

solemn belief as to their efficacy and power. His gentle humanity

forbade his imposing upon me as a duty that which I might not easily

perform. My course was clear. I saved money sufficient for the purpose,

and then I founded the masses which are celebrated four times yearly in

the church of Saint Sulpice. The fulfilment of his pious desire, is the

only offering I can make to the memory of my dear foster-father. Upon

the days on which the masses are said I attend, and in his name repeat

the prayers that are required. This is all that a man with my opinions

can undertake; and this is no hypocrisy, nor can the Omniscient--if that

great spirit of nature be indeed capable of human passions--feel anger

at the act, when I solemnly declare that all I have on earth--and more

than I could wish of earthly happiness--I would this instant barter for

the meek inviolable faith of Jean Sebastian."

The words were spoken at the door of the baron's residence, which we had

already reached. My hand was in that of the speaker. He had taken it in

the act of wishing me farewell. I grasped his palm affectionately, and

answered--

"Why then, my friend, should you not possess this enviable blessing?"

"Because I cannot struggle against conviction: because _faith_ is not

subject to the _will_: because I know too little and too much: because I

cannot grasp a shadow, or palpably discern by day an evanescent, albeit

a lovely, dream of night. These are my reasons. Let us dismiss the

subject."

And the subject _was_ dismissed never to be taken up again. From this

time forward, our theological disputations ceased. The baron forbore his

wit, and the good Cause was spared my feeble advocacy. Whether the baron

suspected that, after all, there might be inconsistency in continuing to

laugh at all religion whilst he persevered in visiting the church, or

whether the seeds of a new and better growth of things began already to

take root within him, I cannot take upon me to decide. To my relief and

comfort, the solemn argument was never again profaned by ribaldry and

unbecoming mirth; and, to my unfeigned delight, the teacher and the

pupil were without one let or hinderance to their perfect sympathy and

friendship.

A year has elapsed since, in the manner shown, I received the key to so

many of the baron's seeming inconsistencies--when, as we were passing

one morning into the _Salle St Agnes_ at the _Hotel Dieu_, we were

surprised to find, standing at the door of the ward--the venerable and

humble minister of Auvergne. His face brightened at the approach of the

baron, and he bowed respectfully in greeting him.

"What brings you here again, old friend?" enquired the surgeon; "no

relapse, I trust?"

"Gratitude," replied the priest. A large basket was on his arm--his

shoes were covered with dust--he had journeyed far on foot. "It is a

year since I left this roof with my life restored to me, under God's

blessing, by you. I could not let the anniversary slip away without

paying you a visit, and bringing you a trifling present. It is scarcely

worth your acceptance--but it is the best my grateful heart can offer,

and I though you would receive it kindly. A few chickens from the

poultry-yard, and a little fruit from the orchard."

The baron received the gift with a better grace than I had seen him

accept a much handsomer fee. He invited the priest to his house,

detained him there for some hours, and dismissed him with many presents

for the poor amongst his flock at Auvergne.

And thus stood matters when the last stroke of my two years was sounded,

and I was summoned home. I left the baron, need I say, with real regret;

he was not pleased at my departure. I engaged to write to him, and to

pay another visit to Paris as soon as my affairs permitted me. I have

never trode French soil since; I never saw the baron afterwards. My

curiosity, however, did not suffer me to be in ignorance of my friend's

proceedings; and what I have now to add is gathered from a

communication, received shortly after the baron's death, from his

faithful and attached _Francois_.

For seven years the priest came annually with his gifts to the Hotel

Dieu, and on each occasion was the baron's visitor; at first for a day

or two, but afterwards for a week--and then longer still. During the

second visitation, it was discovered that the minister was related

distantly to the baron's former friend _Sebastian_. As soon as this was

known, the surgeon offered the good man a home and an annuity. The

former he modestly declined: the latter he accepted, distributing it in

alms amongst the needy who abounded in his parish. The surgeon and the

priest became great friends and frequent correspondents. The temper of

the baron altered. He grew less morose--less violent--less

self-indulgent--less bigoted. He reconciled a proper respect for the

rich with a feeling regard for the poor. He became the pupil of the

simple priest, and profited by his instruction and example. Seven years

after my departure from Paris, the baron fell ill--and the priest of

Auvergne, summoned to his bedside, ministered there, and gave his

blessing to a meek, obedient child. He died, and the priest, shedding

tears of sorrow and of joy commingled, closed his glassy eyes. What

passed between them in his latest moments may not be repeated.

_Francois_ heard but a sentence as he knelt at his master's pillow. It

was amongst the last he uttered.

"Francois, love the Auvergnats: they have saved your poor master--body

and soul!"

That body was borne to the grave by the students of the _Hotel

Dieu_--the greyheaded priest following in the train; and the

_soul_--Heaven in its infinite mercy hath surely not forgotten.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] It was not until a few weeks after my arrival in Paris that I

became acquainted with the fact, thus delicately pointed at by my modest

friend Mr H----. It would appear that no Parisian student of medicine

can pursue his studies at home without assistance. A female friend,

tutor, or whatever else she may be called, graced the lodgings of every

one of my hospital friends.

THE SNOW.

BY DELTA.

I.

The snow! the snow! 'tis a pleasant thing

To watch it falling, falling

Down upon earth with noiseless wing,

As at some spirit's calling:

Each flake seems a fairy parachute,

From mystic cloudland blown,

And earth is still, and air is mute,

As frost's enchanted zone.

II.

The shrubs bend down--behold the trees

Their fingery boughs stretch out

The blossoms of the sky to seize,

As they duck and drive about;

The bare hills plead for a covering,

And ere the grey twilight

Around their shoulders broad shall cling

An arctic cloak of white.

III.

With clapping hands, from drifted door

Of lonely shieling, peeps

The imp, to see thy mantle hoar

O'erspread the craggy steeps.

The eagle round its eyrie screams;

The hill-fox seeks the glade;

And foaming downwards rush the streams,

As mad to be delay'd.

IV.

Falling white on the land it lies,

And falling dark in the sea;

The solan to its island flies,

The crow to the thick larch-tree;

Within the penthouse struts the cock,

His draggled mates among;

While black-eyed robin seems to mock

The sadness with his song.

V.

Released from school, 'twas ours to wage,

How keenly! bloodless war--

Tossing the balls in mimic rage,

That left a gorgeous scar;

While doublets dark were powder'd o'er,

Till darkness none could find;

And valorous chiefs had wounds before,

And caitiff churls behind.

VI.

Comrades, to work!--I see him yet,

That piled-up giant grim,

To startle horse and horseman set,

With Titan girth of limb.

Snell Sir John Frost, with crystal spear,

We hoped thou wouldst have screen'd him;

But Thaw, the traitor, lurking near,

Soon cruelly guillotined him!

VII.

The powdery snow! Alas! to me

It speaks of far-off days,

When a boyish skater mingling free

Amid the merry maze.

Methinks I see the broad ice still;

And my nerves all jangling feel,

Blent with the tones of voices shrill,

The ring of the slider's heel.

VIII.

A scene of revelry! Soon night

Drew his murky curtains round

The world, while a star of lustre bright

Peep'd from the blue profound.

Yet what cared we for darkening lea,

Or warning bell remote?

With rush and cry we scudded by,

And seized the bliss we sought.

IX.

Drift on, ye wild winds! leave no traces

Of dim and danky earth:

While eager faces fill their places

Around the blazing hearth.

Then let the stories of the glories

Of our sires be told;

Or tale of knight, who lady bright

From thraldom saved of old.

X.

Or let the song the charms prolong,

In music's haunting tone,

Of shores where spring's aye blossoming,

And winter is unknown;

Where zephyrs, sick with scent of flowers,

Along the lakelets play;

And lovers, wand'ring through the bowers,

Make life a holiday.

XI.

Sunset and snow! Lo, eve reveals

Her starr'd map to the moon,

And o'er hush'd earth a radiance steals

More bland than that of noon:

The fur-robed genii of the Pole

Dance o'er our mountains white,

Chain up the billows as they roll,

And pearl the caves with light.

XII.

The moon above the eastern fells

Holds on a silent way;

The mill-wheel, sparr'd with icicles,

Reflects her silver ray;

The ivy-tod, beneath its load,

Bends down with frosty curl;

And all around seems sown the ground

With diamond and with pearl.

XIII.

The groves are black, the hills are white,

And, glittering in the sheen,

The lake expands--a sheet of light--

Its willowy banks between;

From the dark sedge that skirts its edge,

The startled wild-duck springs,

While, echoing far up copse and scaur,

The fowler's musket rings.

XIV.

From cove to cove how sweet to rove

Around that fairy scene,

Companion'd, as along we move,

By things and thoughts serene;--

Voiceless--except where, cranking, rings

The skater's curve along,

The demon of the ice, who sings

His deep hoarse undersong.

XV.

In days of old, when spirits held

The air, and the earth below,

When o'er the green were, tripping, seen

The fays--what wert thou, Snow?

Leave eastern Greece its fabled fleece,

For Northland has its own--

The witches of Norway pluck their geese,

And thou art their plumes of down.

XVI.

The snow! the snow! It brings to mind

A thousand happy things,

And but one sad one--'tis to find

Too sure that Time hath wings!

Oh, ever sweet is sight or sound

That tells of long ago;

And I gaze around, with thoughts profound,

Upon the falling snow!

Love in the Wilderness.

My father intended me for the church; but as it did not seem likely that

any body intended a church for me, I considered, from my earliest youth,

that all the education he gave me was thrown away. My tutors were

probably of the same opinion, and did not bestow much care on a person

who had no chance of being a bishop; and finally, the head of St John's,

in the most open and independent manner imaginable, wrote a letter to my

anxious parent, putting an end to any hopes he might have entertained of

my being senior wrangler, or even the wooden spoon, by informing him

that he considered I was qualified--if I devoted my energies entirely to

the subject--to plant cabbages; but with regard to Euclid, it was quite

out of the question. Whether I might have arrived at any eminence in the

praiseworthy pursuit alluded to by the learned Head, I do not know, as

horticulture never was my taste; but his observations on the subject of

Euclid were undeniably correct. I never got up to the asses' bridge, and

certainly could not have passed it if I had; so, in a very disconsolate

frame of mind, I took leave of the university after two terms'

residence, and returned to Rayleigh Court--an old dilapidated

manor-house, which had been in possession of our family even since it

began to fall into disrepair; which, judging from the crooked walls and

tottering chimneys, must have been some time in the reign of the

Plantagenets. I was an only son, and my father spoiled me--not, as only

sons are usually spoiled, by too much indulgence, but by the most

persevering and incessant system of bullying that ever made a poor

mortal miserable. He first cowed and terrified me into nervousness, and

called me a coward; then he thrashed and threatened me into stupidity,

and called me a fool: so that at eighteen there are few young persons of

these degenerate days who have so humble and true an opinion of

themselves, as I had had dinned into me from my earliest years.

I slunk about the old court-yard of the house, or lay behind stacks in

the farm-yard, or sat whole days in a deserted attic, and never went

willingly near my father--the only other inhabitant of the mansion--and

was never enquired after by him. If I saw him, I trembled--if I heard

his voice, I felt inclined to fly to the other end of the house; and at

last, if I heard any one else speak a little louder than ordinary, I was

fain to betake me to some distant room, or even hide in a tangled

plantation called the Wilderness, at the other end of the park. The

house was immensely large, or rather the property was immensely small;

farm after farm had been sold by great-grandfathers and grandfathers;

but as they had not the sense to pull down a side of the mansion for

every estate they parted with, it had at last grown an encumbrance.

There was a residence fit for a man of ten thousand a-year, and a rental

of about eight hundred--the helmet of Otranto on the head of Sir

Geoffrey Hudson.

If I could have been a bishop, or even a dean, and laid by four or five

thousand a-year--such were my father's views of me, and of

ecclesiastical preferment--I might buy back some of the ancient land and

repair the house, and that was the reason he determined I should go into

the church; for it is to be observed, that fathers have extraordinary

eyes when directed to the future fortunes of their sons. They seem to

have no power of seeing small curacy-houses filled with twelve children,

and butchers and bakers walking down the avenue in a melancholy and

despairing manner at Christmas time; but have pertinaciously before

their sight a superb mansion in James's Square, with a steady old coach

and two fat horses at the door; or a fine old turreted palace at

Lambeth, with five or six chaplains contesting the honour of the last

lick of the plate. Not a glimpse can they discover of the cold

rides--miserable scenes among the dying, the idle, the dissolute--hope

deferred--strength decaying--the proud man's contumely, the rich

vulgarian's scorn--struggle, struggle! toil and trouble! Blessings, say

I, on the outspoken head of St John's, and the impenetrability of

Euclid, that kept a blue coat on my back, and disappointed my father's

expectation of seeing me Lord Bishop of Durham. I should have been

chaplain to a poor-house to a certainty, and have envied my

parishioners; but I doubt very much, in the mean time, if the chaplain

of a poor-house would have envied me, imprisoned and pauperized in

Rayleigh Court.

Luckily there were books--whole shelves of them--loaded with rich

morocco bindings, and pecks enough of dust (if distributed through the

month of March) to have ransomed all the Pharaohs. I passed over the

Dugdales, and even the Gwyllins, in despair; and lay whole days on the

floor, surrounded by _Faery Queens_ and other anti-utilitarian

publications, sometimes fancying myself a Red-Cross knight--though

considerably at a loss to devise a substitute for the heavenly Una. But

by some strange caprice of fortune, a hoard was opened to me in one of

the lower shelves, beside the oriel window, which was more valuable than

Potosi and Golconda--a complete set of the Waverley Novels: there they

were--all included--from the great original to _Castle Dangerous_. As my

father's retiring habits prevented me from knowing a human being in the

neighbourhood, I made up to my heart's content for the want of living

friends, by forming the most enthusiastic attachments to Dandie Dinmont,

and Henry Morton, and Jonathan Oldbuck; not forgetting the excessive

love I entertained for Rose Bradwardine, Di Vernon, and a few others; so

that altogether, I think I may say, that no young man of my age was ever

blessed with such a large and enchanting circle of "friends and

sweethearts." In the mean time the external world was moving on,

troubling itself, in all likelihood, as little about me as I did about

it. We had a newspaper once a-week; but I never saw it. I knew that our

gracious sovereign lady, Queen Victoria, had just succeeded to our

gracious sovereign lord, King William--but to that great and important

fact in constitutional history my knowledge of temporary politics was

limited. What did I care about Peels or Melbournes, when I could enter

the council-chamber of Louis the Eleventh, or pass a pleasant morning

with Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth Castle? My father lay--like a snake

surrounded by fire--in the centre of what had once been his family

estate; with purchasers gathering closer and closer round, till, like

the snake of the above similitude, he was inclined to sting himself to

death to avoid the increasing horror of his situation. From strange

muttered growls and deep imprecations when we met, I gathered that the

last fagot had been lighted, in the shape of a proposition by some

Eastern nabob, that he should sell the remaining portion of the land.

He, Rayleigh of Rayleigh Court--to sell to a stranger the park, the

fields, the house! He would have died first. And the reason for wishing

to buy, which was assigned by the intending purchaser, was worst of all;

that he had already made himself owner of every other farm which had

once belonged to the Rayleigh manors, and desired the family mansion to

make the estate complete--and his name was Jeeks--Jeeks of Rayleigh

Court! My father would have shot him if he had come within his reach;

but as Mr Jeeks kept at a respectable distance, the over-charge of

indignation was poured forth upon me; and the opinion, so obligingly

given of my abilities and probable success in life by the Master of St

John's, was never for an hour forgotten. It was very evident that there

was no hope of family restoration to be founded on so profound a

blockhead--an ass that could not get into the church--that moped and

wandered about the woods--that trembled when he was spoken to; and so

far from pushing his way in the world, and acquiring a fortune by

running off with an heiress, had not courage enough to look a milkmaid

in the face. I kept out of his sight more than ever, and read _Ivanhoe_

for the fifteenth time. Oh, Friar Tuck! Oh, Brian de Bois Guilbert! What

did I care for Mr Jeeks and his offers for Rayleigh Court?

I was now twenty years of age, with the figure of a grenadier and the

courage of a boarding-school girl; and every day my father's indignation

seemed to increase, when he saw such a fund of marketable qualities

lying useless--my quietness and decorum would have done for the church;

my height and broad shoulders would have qualified me for Gretna Green.

But such a chicken-hearted fellow, he well knew, would sooner die than

mention a postchaise; and so the old gentleman, having ceased for some

years to express his contempt for me with the aid of his walking stick,

and a profusion of epithets unheard of in Johnson's _Dictionary_, took

now to the easier method of a dignified and unbroken silence. It was a

charming change, and I was as happy as Robinson Crusoe in the desert

island before Friday made his appearance. One day in June--"it was the

poet's leafy month of June"--I took my way, as was my Wont, through the

park to the Wilderness. The shadows of the broad thick-foliaged oaks lay

in gigantic masses on the smooth turf, (of which the gardeners were a

few relics of the former herds of deer, in the shape of wide-antlered

stags and dappled roes;) all the sights and sounds of summer beauty were

united in that solitary greensward; and for the first time in my life I

felt a regret pass over me that the grandeur of my family had decayed,

and a faint fluttering became perceptible to me, round my heart, of a

wish to restore our fortunes. But the intense appreciation of my own

deficiencies in which I had been educated, soon dispelled any pleasing

illusions that the self-love of twenty years of age might have excited;

and I fell into the opposite extreme, and rejoiced to think that in me

the family tree would lose its last branch, and that the old house would

crumble into actual ruins, instead of holding forth the false

appearances of solidity and strength which led to the expectation that

it was still capable of repair. I felt like Wilfred of Ivanhoe, when he

resolved to leave his home for ever; and if there had been any crusade

going on in 1838, and an Isaac of York willing to furnish me with horse

and harness, I should have been very glad to try my chance against the

Saracens, and prove myself a true Red Cross knight; for even at that

time, I felt assured that against any body but my father I could hold up

my head like a man; or on any subject but my stupidity--(which I was

willing to concede, as it came guaranteed under the hand and seal of the

master of a college)--I could have maintained my ground with the courage

of a Front-de-Boeuf. I took a bolder step and manlier bearing as I

passed along in the sunshine, and saw defined on the grass before me the

shadow of a gigantic being, elongated in the slanting rays to about

twelve feet high, with limbs and shoulders certainly a little attenuated

by the same solar deception, but still not quite such thread-papers as I

have since seen do duty in ball-rooms, to the evident satisfaction of

then possessors. The Wilderness was reached at last: and here I must

premise that the aristocratic appearances of bucks and roes entirely

ceased; for the said Wilderness was appropriated to the feeding of

certain animals of unpoetic figures, and even prosaic names, but which,

when well cooked and duly supplied with a condiment of beans, furnish by

no means a contemptible dinner to a hungry sportsman. The man who

despises beans and bacon is uniformly a puppy. I will, therefore, now

venture on the vulgar word, and say the Wilderness was used for feeding

swine, and all the long days the frisky quadrupeds went wiggling their

curly tails, and snorting among the oak-trees, with enormous

satisfaction. On reaching the centre of this umbrageous feeding-ground,

I was surprised to see my usual place of meditation occupied by a

stranger. It was a young girl, exhausted apparently by the heat of the

day, resting on the mossy turf and leaning against the trunk of a fine

old tree. Her bonnet was on the ground beside her; her hair was gently

moved to and fro by the wandering breeze; and on her lap lay a

work-basket, which she had evidently laid down to give herself more

entirely to repose. She was sound asleep, and I need scarcely say, as my

experience of the fair sex was extremely limited, that she was the most

captivating specimen I had ever seen; but shyness and awkwardness

overcame my desire to make her acquaintance. I looked at her for a

moment, saw the finely cut features, the beautifully complexioned

cheeks, the smiling lips and graceful figure, and turned away angry at

myself, at the same time that I could not summon courage to address her.

Before I had gone far I heard a dreadful scream a little to my right,

and in an agony of terror a fair-haired young child, of six or seven

years old, rushed towards the sleeper, pursued apparently by one of the

largest of the grunting flock. It was evidently only in the excessive

buoyancy of its porcine spirits that it caracolled, and snuffed, and

galloped in such an imposing manner; but the terror of the little flyer

was as sincere as if it had been a royal Bengal tiger. In a moment I

sprang forward, gave the huge animal a kick with all my might, in a spot

which must have materially improved the tenderness of the ham--and took

the almost fainting child in my arms. The sleeper started up, and was no

little astonished to behold the feat I performed. I muttered a few

confused words, and tried in vain to still the terrors of my young

charge; but in a few minutes our united efforts had the desired effect,

and the elder sister thanked me for my chivalrous interference, and said

she would never forget my kindness.

"It's nothing at all," I said--"I almost wish it had been a bonassus,

and I had had a rifle."

"Oh! a pig, I assure you, is quite enough for us: isn't it, Amy?" Amy

seemed to consider a pig a great deal too much, and looked round in

alarm every time she heard a rustle among the branches.

"It would have enabled me," I said, "to be really useful--like the

master of Ravenswood, I added, when he shot the wild bull."

"But you wouldn't surely wish to see Amy and me in real danger, merely

to have the glory of delivering us from it. That would be too selfish."

"Not selfish if I was certain of saving you; and, besides, it would be

such an excellent introduction."

"But we have already told you, that we are as much indebted for your

interference as if you had put a whole herd of furious cattle to death.

For my part, I am perfectly satisfied with the introduction as it is."

"Then we may consider ourselves friends?" I enquired, gradually becoming

less embarrassed by the manner of the unknown.

"Certainly--I tell you we shall never forget your gallant interference.

It is strange we never met with such an adventure before; for Amy and I

come very often here."

"Indeed?--It is certainly very strange that I have never seen you

before; for _I_ am here almost every day."

"Why, if you keep your eyes constantly on the ground, you have no great

chance of seeing any thing but the grass. We have seen you often."

"And you know my name, of course?"

"Henry Rayleigh, of Rayleigh Court. Oh! we know all about you."

"And I--I am ashamed to say, I have not the same advantage with regard

to your style and title--I feel sure it must be a beautiful name."

"You had better guess."

"Flora? Edith? Rebecca?"

"We must go home now," said the little one.

"Isabella? Brenda? Minna?"

"No--you will never find it out."

"Then you will surely tell me."

"Oh no!--that would spoil the romance of our acquaintance."

"And am I never to find out who you are?"

"Probably not, if you bury yourself in the woods all your life. I have

been your neighbour for half a year, and you have never seen me."

"My eyes must have been blinded; but I will bury myself no more. Do tell

me your name, and where you live, for I am very ill qualified to be a

discoverer."

"I shall certainly not destroy the charm of mystery. Let it be enough

that you know me by sight. The name is of no consequence--but if you

really wish to know it"----

"I do indeed."

"Call me Lucy Ashton, and that will remind you of the service you did me

to-day. In the mean time do not follow us. I should wish this meeting

kept a secret--come, Amy."

And so saying, and taking her sister by the hand, she walked rapidly

away, leaving me with the pleasing expression which is commonly

attributed to a stuck pig, gazing at her graceful motion, and half

inclined to consider the whole interview a delusion of the fancy, or at

least a dream.

Lucy Ashton!--a charming idea!--and I the master of Ravenswood! My

neighbour for half a year--and often in the Wilderness! Then of course

she will come often here again. I will find out who she is. I will sit

no longer in the deep recess of an old pew at church, which is hidden

from all the rest of the congregation. I will even go down and call on

the clergyman. He must surely have observed the most beautiful girl in

the world. He can't have been such a mole as I have been. I will find

out all about her; and astonish her next time we meet, by telling her

the result of my enquiries.

On these exploratory thoughts intent, I took my homeward way. The old

turrets of the house rose before me, more distressingly symptomatic of

poverty and decay than ever. I crossed the noble quadrangle, which was

overgrown with grass, and betook myself to the great dark-wainscoted old

library, utterly disgusted at the folly or extravagance of my ancestors,

in having reduced me to such a condition. I began to think that my

father was not so much to blame in lamenting our fallen state as

before;--and that night I fell asleep, wondering if Lucy Ashton's father

was a governor of the Bank of England, or if she was as poor and

portionless a being as myself.

CHAPTER II.

Next day I walked down to the parsonage. It was in Rayleigh village, and

the living had once belonged to our family, but among the diminishing

possessions was the first to be disposed of. It was held by Mr Dobble,

to whom I was hardly known except by sight--and the reverend gentleman

was no little astonished when my name was announced. He was a little

short man, about fifty years of age, very polite and very talkative; but

who seemed always to recollect something or other in the middle of a

speech, and end on quite a different subject from what he had begun.

"My dear sir," he began, "I am truly glad to see you. By the by, I don't

think I have ever seen you in the parsonage before."

"I have lived very retired--we never move from home--my father sees no

company."

"Ah, very true--the more's the pity! I shall always be delighted if you

will come in at any time. By the by, are you fond of fishing?"

"Yes, I sometimes fish."

"Your father keeps you a great deal too much boxed up for a young man of

your time of life. You should be forming a stock of friends just now, to

last you your lifetime. By the by, are you a judge of wine?"

"No, I never taste it."

"No?--for I was going to observe that a young man should act like a

young housekeeper--lay in his friends as the other does his cellar; and

always keep up the stock--particularly pleasant men and port-wine. They

improve"----

"My stock is certainly very limited," I said.

"You should enlarge it at once. By the by, there are a great many new

residents in this parish since I was inducted."

"So I believe."

"Ah, just so!--never called on them, of course--By the by, will you have

any lunch?"

"No, I thank you. I have never called on any of the new-comers. I don't

even know their names."

"That's odd! But it isn't of so much consequence now, for they are all

getting bought out. By the by, would you like to see the repairs in the

chancel?"

"No, I thank you. Are they getting bought out?"

"Not a doubt of it. All the old farms and manor-houses, which had been

converted into comfortable modern dwelling-houses by the different

proprietors, are nearly all in one owner's hands again--as they used to

be, in ancient times, in your ancestors' hands. The whole estate nearly

is reunited, and the purchaser is restoring things as much as he can to

their ancient condition. He gave Mr Juffles thirty thousand pounds for

the Grange about six months ago; and all the Juffles family is to be off

in six weeks. By the by, you are not acquainted with the

Juffleses?--they haven't been here more than five years."

"No, I don't know them--are they a numerous family?"

"Sons and daughters by the dozen. By the by, weren't you at college for

some time?"

"Yes, for a few terms. How many sons has Mr Juffles?"

"Seven or eight--John, Thomas, Abraham, Alexander, George, Hookey, and

another; but whether his name is Richard or Robert I don't recollect. By

the by, was it Oxford or Cambridge?"

"And the daughters?" I said, not attending to his question--"he has many

daughters, you said, as well as sons."

"Oh, seven or eight of them too--Susan, Martha, Elizabeth, a younger

one, I don't recollect her name, Anne, Sophia, and some little ones. By

the by, the Indian mail is very interesting--have you seen the news?"

"No, I never see a newspaper. Is there a young lady among Mr Juffles's

family of the pretty name of Amy?"

"Amy?--Amy?--'pon my word I don't recollect. And yet I think I do. I

think I have heard the governess call one of the children Amy. By the

by, we have had charming weather of late."

"Charming. How old is the governess?"

"A young person--too young, I should say, for such a charge; seventeen,

perhaps."

"And you are sure you have heard her call one of them Amy?"

"Yes, I think I may say I am sure. By the by, the French seem very

unsteady. I admire Louis Philippe."

"Is the governess pretty?"

"I should say so--yes, I should say decidedly pretty. By the by, he

seems inclined to dismiss M. Thiers."

"Blue eyes, beautiful mouth, sweet smile, and musical voice?"

"Who, my good sir?--Louis Philippe and M. Thiers? By the by, weren't you

asking me about Mr Juffles's----? Ah! now I recollect. The

governess--yes, she has blue eyes, and sings beautifully."

"And walks out with Amy?"

"Of course. By the by, do you hunt?"

"No, I have no horse. And how old are Mr Juffles's other daughters?"

"All ages, from twenty-three downwards. By the by"----

"Is there one about seventeen?"

"Yes, I should say the pretty one--I forget her name, Elizabeth, I

think--was just about that age. You should be introduced. But, by the

by, it would be of little use. They leave the Grange in a few weeks, if

indeed they are not gone already; for they were to be ready at a day's

notice, and I haven't seen them since Sunday week. By the by, Russia

seems very discontented. Do you think they meditate an invasion?"

"I never read politics. Are any of the other neighbours about to remove

also?"

"Oh yes! Mr Poggs, the rich West Indian who bought Hartley Mead, that

used to be a part of your park a hundred years ago, and fitted up the

Gothic cottage at such an immense expense. He's bought out--fifteen

thousand pounds for two hundred acres, and he is to remove next

Michaelmas. By the by, which style of architecture do you prefer?"

"I know nothing of the subject. Has Mr Poggs a family?"

"Two daughters, but I scarcely know them. Old Poggs is half a dissenter.

By the by"----

"How old are the daughters?"

"'Pon my word, my young friend, you would do for an inquisitor."

"I have a very particular reason for asking these questions."

"Ah I see!" said Mr Dobble, "young men will be curious about their

neighbours' children. By the by, have you seen the Bishop of London's

charge?"

"No, I see nothing new. How old are Mr Poggs's daughters?"

"One, the eldest, a tall handsome girl, I should say about seventeen;

the other six or seven."

"Do you know the younger one's name?"

"No, I don't think I ever heard it. Do you know the young ladies?"

"I have told you already, that I have not the happiness of knowing any

of the neighbours;--and I regret very much to hear that they are going

away before I have had the opportunity of making their acquaintance."

"Oh no, not all! They are not all going. Mr Jeeks himself will be

constantly resident. By the by, are you fond of shooting?"

"Has he any family?"

"A son--yes, I know he has a son, but I am not sure of any daughters. In

fact, between ourselves, I don't think he has any daughters,--and it is

no great loss it they were any thing like the son. No, I know he has no

daughters. By the by, he talks of coming home from college this month."

"How old is the son?"

"About one or two and twenty. Very stupid or very idle, I am afraid. He

can't take his degree."

I got up to go away. I felt that the object of my mission was

unattained.

"Don't go, my dear sir; don't go. 'Pon my word I did not mean any thing

in what I said. He may be very clever, and very admirable in every

respect, though he does not take his degree. By the by, did you see

Brougham's speech on the poor-law? He should be called the poor-lawyer

_par excellence_, as the French say. You'll call on me soon again, I

hope. By the by, are you fond of tulips? I have a beautiful bed just in

bloom."

O Poggs!--O Juffles!--O nameless governess! which of you all was Lucy

Ashton?--I waited all that day in the Wilderness, but nobody came. The

long shadows began to point eastward; the pigs were all driven in; the

world was left to silence and to me; and I walked slowly and

disconsolately home.

On getting inside the great door of the court-yard, I heard

voices--loud, angry voices. I recognized my father's tones, and was

about to go round by the inner wall, when, hurrying rapidly towards me,

I saw three persons--my father was one of them. The elder of the others

was a man about sixty years of age--brown, almost black in the

complexion, with nankin trousers a world too large for his long legs; an

immense broad-brimmed straw-hat on his head, and a large gold-headed

cane in his hand. The other was a little sharp-eyed, thin-featured man,

about my own age, but with the appearance of twenty times the shrewdness

I could ever muster--one of the prematurely sagacious youths who seem as

if they had been born attorneys, and are on the look-out for sharp

practice.

"I have already told you, sir, that your intrusion is insulting," said

my father: "relieve me of your presence."

"Jist as you like, that's matter of course," said the old man; "but the

time will come when you'll repent this here unpoliteness. I never see

sich a thing from a real gentleman to another in all my born days."

"It's because he ain't master of the philosophy of good manners,"

squeaked the younger.

"Why, what in hearth," continued the senior, "is there to be angry

about? I want to buy your land--it ain't any sich enormous property ater

all--and offer you about three times the vallyation of a respectable

surveyor; what's that to set up your back about? Come now, there's a

good gentleman, think better over it. The money is all ready at the

bank."

"Do you wish to drive me to violent measures--to throw you into the

river?" asked my father in a voice of concentrated passion that made me

feel very uncomfortable.

"By no manner of means--by no means whatsomever."

"As to that," interposed the shrill voice of the youth, "two can play at

that game; but it ain't philosophical to talk of sich matters--father

makes you a fair offer."

"And I make you another," I said; "namely, one minute's time to leave

this house. If you are found one instant beyond the minute, by Heaven,

you and your father make but one step from this spot into the centre of

the brook!"

"Oh! ha! who are you, sir?" the youth began, but paused when he saw some

convulsive twitching taking possession of my hands; and an expression

far removed from either philosophy or politeness spreading around my

eyes.

"This here is young Rayleigh," said the old man, "and p'r'aps he'll be

more open to reason and twenty-seven thousand five hundred pounds."

"Thirty seconds are elapsed," I said, going forward to the young man;

"you have but thirty more." My hand advanced, but, luckily before the

thirty seconds were exhausted, the door had closed on the hateful

presence, and my father held out his hand.

"Thank you, Henry--I am obliged to you, Henry," he said; and I had never

heard him call me by my name since the memorable character bestowed on

me by the head of St John's. He looked me all over, as he spoke, from

head to foot: he seemed surprised and pleased at the result of his

survey.

"They are vulgar people," he said, "and have irritated me past endurance

by their insulting offers. They have never ventured to present

themselves here till now; and, from the reception we have given them, I

hardly think they will repeat their visit."

"I am sorry, sir, you allowed them to chafe you."

"I will not do so in future. You will be beside me, Henry; the father

and son together can offer a bold face to the world in spite of these

crumbling walls. We can despise the dross of that vile Croesus, and

keep the Rayleigh mansion-house in the Rayleigh name."

"Who is he?"

"The possessor of every other portion of the estate but this; his name

is Jeeks, and the young fellow is his son--his only child, I

believe--very rich, and very disgusting. Let us think of them no more."

That evening we had a long and confidential talk; and I perceived that,

though he had finally given up all intention of getting me into the

church, in the hopes of patching up the holes in the old roof with a

mitre, he had fully made up his mind on the subject of a widow. I

rejoiced that Mrs Coutts was already disposed of. He talked a long time

of jointures, three per cents, India stock; and I--O youth! O hope!--I

mused all the time on the beautiful eyes and sweet smiles of my unknown

enchantress, and made pious resolutions to betake myself, like some

ancient anchorite, to the Wilderness, for the purpose of worship and

meditation.