"With a sad majestic motion--

With a stately slow surprise--

From their earthward-bound devotion

Lifting up your languid eyes:

_Would you freeze my louder boldness,

Humbly smiling as you go?_

One faint frown of distant coldness

Flitting fast across each marble brow?"

What say you, Parson Sir Hugh Evans? "The tevil with his tam; what

phrase is this--_freeze my louder boldness_? Why, it is affectations."

If any one, in possession of a good ear, and with a certain facility

for composing verse, though destitute of the inventive faculty, will

persevere in imitating the style of different poets, he is almost

certain at last to discover some writer whose peculiar manner he can

assume with far greater facility than that of others. The _Strayed

Reveller_ fails altogether with Mrs Browning; because it is beyond his

power, whilst following her, to make any kind of agreement between

sound and sense. He is indeed very far from being a metaphysician, for

his perception is abundantly hazy: and if he be wise, he will abstain

from any future attempts at profundity. But he has a fair share of

the painter's gift; and were he to cultivate that on his own account,

we believe that he might produce something far superior to any of his

present efforts. As it is, we can merely accord him the praise of

sketching an occasional landscape, very like one which we might expect

from Alfred Tennyson. He has not only caught the trick of Tennyson's

handling, but he can use his colours with considerable dexterity. He is

like one of those second-rate artists, who, with Danby in their eye,

crowd our exhibitions with fiery sunsets and oceans radiant in carmine;

sometimes their pictures are a little overlaid, but, on the whole, they

give a fair idea of the manner of their undoubted master.

The following extract will, we think, illustrate our meaning. It is

from a poem entitled _Mycerinus_, which, though it does not possess the

interest of any tale, is correctly and pleasingly written:--

"So spake he, half in anger, half in scorn,

And one loud cry of grief and of amaze

Broke from his sorrowing people; so he spake,

And turning, left them there; and with brief pause,

Girt with a throng of revellers, bent his way

To the cool regions of the grove he loved.

There by the river banks he wandered on,

From palm-grove on to palm-grove; happy trees,

Their smooth tops shining sunwards, and beneath

Burying their unsunn'd stems in grass and flowers;

Where in one dream the feverish time of youth

Might fade in slumber, and the feet of Joy

Might wander all day long and never tire:

Here came the king, holding high feast, at morn

Rose-crown'd; and ever, when the sun went down,

A hundred lamps beam'd in the tranquil gloom

From tree to tree, all through the twinkling grove,

Revealing all the tumult of the feast,

Flush'd guests, and golden goblets, foam'd with wine,

While the deep burnish'd foliage overhead

Splinter'd the silver arrows of the moon."

This really is a pretty picture; its worst, and perhaps its only fault,

being that it constantly reminds us of the superior original artist.

Throughout the book indeed, and incorporated in many of the poems,

there occur images to which Mr Tennyson has a decided right by priority

of invention, and which the _Strayed Reveller_ has "conveyed" with

little attention to ceremony. For example, in a poem which we never

much admired, _The Vision of Sin_, Mr Tennyson has the two following

lines--

"And on the glimmering limit, far withdrawn,

God made himself an awful rose of dawn."

This image is afterwards repeated in the _Princess_. Thus--

"Till the sun

Grew broader toward his death and fell, and all

The rosy heights came out above the lawns."

Young Danby catches at the idea, and straightway favours us with a

copy--

"When the first rose-flush was steeping

All the frore peak's awful crown."

The image is a natural one, and of course open to all the world, but

the diction has been clearly borrowed.

Not only in blank verse but in lyrics does the Tennysonian tendency

of our author break out, and to that tendency we owe by far the

best poem in the present volume. "The Forsaken Merman," though the

subject is fantastic, and though it has further the disadvantage of

directly reminding us of one of Alfred's early extravaganzas, is

nevertheless indicative of considerable power, not only of imagery

and versification, but of actual pathos. A maiden of the earth has

been taken down to the depths of the sea, where for years she has

resided with her merman lover, and has borne him children. We shall

let the poet tell the rest of his story, the more readily because

we are anxious that he should receive credit for what real poetical

accomplishment he possesses, and that he may not suppose, from our

censure of his faults, that we are at all indifferent to his merits.

"Children dear, was it yesterday

(Call yet once) that she went away?

Once she sate with you and me,

On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,

And the youngest sate on her knee.

She comb'd its bright hair, and she tended it well,

When down swung the sound of the far-off bell.

She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear green sea.

She said, 'I must go, for my kinsfolk pray

In the little gray church on the shore to-day.

'Twill be Easter-time in the world--ah me'

And I lose my poor soul, Merman, here with thee.'

I said, 'Go up, dear heart, through the waves,

Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves.'

She smil'd, she went up through the surf in the bay.

Children dear, was it yesterday?

"Children dear, were we long alone?

'The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan.

Long prayers,' I said, 'in the world they say.

Come,' I said, and we rose through the surf in the bay.

We went up the beach, by the sandy down

Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-wall'd town.

Through the narrow pav'd streets, where all was still,

To the little gray church on the windy hill.

From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers,

But we stood without in the cold-blowing airs.

We climbed on the graves, on the stones worn with rains,

And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded panes.

She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear:

'Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here.

Dear heart,' I said, 'we are long alone,

The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan.'

But, ah, she gave me never a look,

For her eyes were sealed to the holy book.

'Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door.'

Come away, children, call no more.

Come away, come down, call no more.

"Down, down, down,

Down to the depths of the sea.

She sits at her wheel in the humming town,

Singing most joyfully.

Hark, what she sings; 'O joy, O joy,

For the humming street, and the child with its toy.

For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well.

For the wheel where I spun,

And the bless'd light of the sun.'

And so she sings her fill,

Singing most joyfully,

Till the shuttle falls from her hand,

And the whizzing wheel stands still.

She steals to the window, and looks at the sand;

And over the sand at the sea;

And her eyes are set in a stare;

And anon there breaks a sigh,

And anon there drops a tear,

From a sorrow-clouded eye,

And a heart sorrow-laden,

A long, long sigh,

For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden,

And the gleam of her golden hair."

Had the author given us much poetry like this, our task would,

indeed, have been a pleasant one; but as the case is otherwise, we

can do no more than point to the solitary pearl. Yet it is something

to know that, in spite of imitation, and a taste which has gone far

astray, this writer has powers, which, if properly directed and

developed, might insure him a sympathy, which, for the present, must

be withheld. Sympathy, indeed, he cannot look for, so long as he

appeals neither to the heart, the affections, nor the passions of

mankind, but prefers appearing before them in the ridiculous guise of

a misanthrope. He would fain persuade us that he is a sort of Timon,

who, despairing of the tendency of the age, wishes to wrap himself up

in the mantle of necessity, and to take no part whatever in the vulgar

concerns of existence. It is absolutely ridiculous to find this young

gentleman--after confiding "to a Republican friend" the fact that he

despises

"The barren, optimistic sophistries

Of comfortable moles, whom what they do

Teaches the limit of the just and true,

And for such doing have no need of eyes,"--

thus favouring the public in a sonnet with his views touching the

onward progress of society:--

"Yet, when I muse on what life is, I seem

Rather to patience prompted, than that proud

Prospect of hope which France proclaims so loud--

France, famed in all good arts, in none supreme.

Seeing this vale, this earth, whereon we dream,

Is on all sides o'ershadowed by the high

Uno'erleap'd mountains of necessity,

Sparing us narrower margin than we deem.

Nor will that day dawn at a human nod,

When, bursting through the network superpos'd

By selfish occupation--plot and plan,

Lust, avarice, envy--liberated man,

All difference with his fellow-man compos'd,

Shall be left standing face to face with God."

What would our friend be at? If he is a Tory, can't he find work enough

in denouncing and exposing the lies of the League, and in taking up the

cudgels for native industry? If he is a Whig, can't he be great upon

sewerage, and the scheme of planting colonies in Connaught, to grow

corn and rear pigs at prices which will not pay for the manure and the

hogs'-wash? If he is a Chartist, can't he say so, and stand up manfully

with Julian Harney for "the points," whatever may be their latest

number? But we think that, all things considered, he had better avoid

politics. Let him do his duty to God and man, work six hours a-day,

whether he requires to do so for a livelihood or not, marry and get

children, and, in his moments of leisure, let him still study Sophocles

and amend his verses. But we hope that, whatever he does, he will not

inflict upon us any more such platitudes as "Resignation," addressed

"to Fausta" or any sonnets similar to that which he has written in

_Emerson's Essays_. We tender our counsel with a most sincere regard

for his future welfare; for, in spite of his many faults, the _Strayed

Reveller_ is a clever fellow; and though it cannot be averred that,

up to the present time, he has made the most of fair talents and a

first-rate education, we are not without hope that, some day or other,

we may be able to congratulate him on having fairly got rid of his

affected misanthropy, his false philosophy, and his besetting sin of

imitation, and that he may yet achieve something which may come home to

the heart, and secure the admiration of the public.

NEW LIGHT ON THE STORY OF LADY GRANGE.

Before we offer our readers some new light on this renowned mystery,

it is necessary that we should give them, in a sentence, the briefest

possible outline of the oft-told tale, so far as it has been hitherto

known. John Erskine, Lord Grange, a judge of the Court of Session, and

a leader of the ultra-religious party in Scotland, was married to the

daughter of that Chiesley of Dalry who had shot the Lord President in

the High Street of Edinburgh, for giving a decision against him. The

marriage was a very unhappy one. The pious leader of a religious party

was scandalised in various ways, obliged to live separate from his

wife, and subjected to many outrages from her. At length her death was

announced, her funeral was duly attended, and the widower preserved the

decorous silence of one to whom death has brought relief from what is

generally counted a calamity.

This occurred in January 1732. The lapse of nearly nine years had

almost consigned the remembrance of the unfortunate woman to oblivion,

when strange rumours gained circulation, that she who was believed

to be dead and buried was living in bondage in the distant island

of St Kilda. The account she subsequently gave of her adventures,

bore, that one night in her solitary lodging she was seized by some

Highlanders, whom she knew to be retainers of Lord Lovat, and conveyed

away, gagged and blindfolded, in the arms of a man seated in a sedan

chair. It appears that she was kept in various places of confinement,

and subjected to much rough usage, in the Low Country. At length she

was conveyed north-westward, towards the Highland line. She passed

through the grim solitudes of Glencoe, where recent murder must have

awakened in the captive horrible associations, on to the western part

of Lord Lovat's country, where any deed of tyranny or violence might be

committed with safety. Thence she was transferred to the equally safe

country of Glengarry, and, after crossing some of the highest mountains

in Scotland, was shipped on the wild Loch Hourn, for ever darkened by

the shadow of gigantic mountains falling on its narrow waters. She

was kept for some time on the small island of Heskir, belonging to

Macdonald of Sleat, and was afterwards transferred to the still more

inaccessible St Kilda, which has acquired a sort of celebrity from

its connexion with her strange history. In 1741, when a communication

from the captive had, through devious courses, reached her friends in

Edinburgh, an effort was made to release her; but it was baffled by her

transference to another place of confinement, where she died in 1745.

Little did the old judge imagine, at the time when he had so

successfully and so quietly got rid of his domestic curse--when the

mock funeral had been performed, the family condolences acted over,

and the victim safely conveyed to her distant prison, that on some

future day the public, frantic with curiosity, would tear to pieces

the covering of his great mystery, and expose every fragment of it to

the admiring crowd. It was but a simple matter in the eyes of those

who were concerned in it. The woman was troublesome--her husband was

a judge, and therefore a powerful man--so he put her out of the way.

Nor was he cruel or unscrupulous, according to the morality of the

circle in which he lived, in the method he adopted to accomplish his

end. He had advisers about him, who would have taken a shorter and a

more effectual plan for ridding themselves of a troublesome woman,

wife or not, and would have walked forth into the world without being

haunted by any dread that rumours of remote captivities might rise up

to disturb their peace. Indeed, when we remember the character of the

instruments to whom Lord Grange committed the kidnapping and removal of

his wife, it is only wonderful that they had patience enough to carry

out so long and troublesome an operation; and that they did not, out of

regard to themselves and to their employer, put a violent termination

to the career of their troublesome charge, and send her at once to

where the weary are at rest. Had this been her fate, the affair of

Lady Grange would have been one of secondary interest. Such things

were too easily accomplished in those days. The chances would have

been greatly against a discovery, and if it took place, equally great

against the conviction and punishment of the offenders, unless the lady

had a more powerful party at her back than the daughter of Chiesley the

murderer would be likely to command. It would have created, so far as

it was known, great excitement, and some little horror at the time, but

it would have speedily sunk to the level of the ordinary contents of

the criminal records, and would never have bequeathed to the ensuing

century an object which antiquarians have hunted out as religiously and

zealously as if it had involved the fate of Europe.

In fact, Lord Grange was what was called in his day "a discreet man."

He wished to avoid scandal, and bore a character for religious zeal,

which appears to have been on occasion a very serious burden not easily

borne. He dreaded scandal and notoriety, and therefore he shrouded his

great act of iniquity in the most profound secrecy. Moreover, he kept

a conscience--something that, like Rob Roy's honesty, might be called

a conscience "after a kind." He said pretty accurately of himself in

his _Diary_--"I have religion enough to spoil my relish and prosecution

of this world, and not enough to get me to the next." We may probably

believe that, even if he could have performed the deed with perfect

secrecy and safety, so far as this world is concerned, he would not

have murdered his wife, his conscience recoiling at the dreadful

crime--his fear of the world causing him to shrink from exposure.

Urged by these two conflicting motives, he adopted the expedient of

the secret removal to a desolate and distant spot, believing that he

had surrounded the whole project with a deep and impenetrable cloud of

mystery. Never was human foresight more signally set at naught. It was

this very machinery of intense mystery that, by ministering to one of

the cravings of the human imagination, has made the incident one of the

most notorious of human events. It is almost satisfactory to know that

this dreaded notoriety visited the hoary tyrant, for after he had for

nine years enjoyed in secret the success of his plot, and kept his fair

fame with the world, we find him, when legal proceedings were commenced

against him, bitterly saying that "strange stories were spread all

over the town of Edinburgh, and made the talk of coffee-houses and

tea-tables, and sent, as I have ground to apprehend, to several other

places of Great Britain."[20] One may notice, too, in the following

discontented mumblings, the bitterness with which he contemplated the

divulging of the secret,--it is in a letter to the imprisoned lady's

champion, Mr Hope of Rankeillor.

"Any of the smallest discretion will see what a worthy part

_he_ acts towards me and mine, and many others, and even

towards the person pretended to be cared for, who, in such

an occasion, begins by spreading through Great Britain

strange stories, unexamined and unvouched, and not so much

as communicated to us concerned; and next, when offered

satisfaction, yet proceeds to fix such on public records, and

to force others to bring on record sad and proved truths, which

he himself knows and formerly has acknowledged to be truths,

and that ought for ever to be sunk. This cannot be construed to

be anything but an endeavour to fix, as far as in him lies, a

lasting blot on persons and families. The first was defamation,

and the next would be the same, under a cover of a pretended

legal shape, but in itself more atrocious. One cannot doubt

that this is a serious thing to many more than me, and cannot

but be laid to heart."[21]

The text from which we are at present discoursing, is a bundle of

confidential letters from Lord Grange, printed in the _Miscellany of

the Spalding Club_, and not the least valuable and curious of the

many contributions made by that useful and spirited institution, to

the elucidation of Scottish history and manners. At the foot of the

high conical hill of Bennochie, in a small group of forest trees,

there nestles one of those quaint small turreted mansions of old

French architecture so frequently to be seen in the north of Scotland.

The owner of this mansion was an Erskine; he was related to Erskine

of Grange, and it so happened that this relative was the person in

whose ear he poured his secret sorrows, as a disappointed and morbid

politician. Such confidential outpourings are not the most interesting

of communications, even when one has the fortune to be so far connected

with the wailer as to be the chosen vessel into which he pours the

anguish of his heart. Some of these letters are portentous--they

are absolute pamphlets--in their spirit as yellow and mildewed with

discontent, as their outward aspect may have been by the cold damp

air of Bennochie, when they were discovered in the worm-eaten chest.

It requires a little zeal to peruse the whole series; but, unless we

are greatly deceived, we think we can present our readers with a few

plums picked out of the mass, which they may find not unacceptable.

And here, by the way, let us observe, how great a service is done by

those who ransack the repositories of our old Scottish houses, and

make their contents accessible to the public. We are convinced that in

dusty garrets, in vaults, in musty libraries, and crazy old oak-chests,

there is still an almost inexhaustible wealth of curious lore of

this description. The correspondence of the old Scottish families is

generally far more interesting than that of English houses of the same

rank. Since the civil wars of the seventeenth century, England may be

said to have been internally undisturbed, and no private papers contain

matters of state, save those of the great families whose ancestors have

been high in office. But in Scotland, the various outbreaks, and the

unceasing Jacobite intrigues, made almost all the country gentlemen

statesmen--made too many of them state offenders. The Essex squire, be

he ever so rich, was still but the lord of a certain quantity of timber

and oxen, grass and turnips. The Highland laird, be he ever so poor,

was a leader of men--a person who had more or less the power of keeping

the country in a state of war or danger--a sort of petty king reigning

over his own people. Hence, while the letters of the last century

one might pick up in a comfortable old English mansion, would relate

to swing-gates and turnpike roads, game preserves and tithes, those

found hidden behind the wainscoat of a gaunt old cheerless Scottish

fortalice, would relate to risings at home, or landings from abroad--to

the number of broadswords and targets still kept in defiance of the

Arms Act--to communications received through French Jesuits, or secret

missions "across the water."[22]

We believe that the passages from these documents, on which we are now

to comment, in the first place exhibit to us pretty plainly the motive

of Lord Grange for the deportation of his wife; and, in the second

place, prove that he entertained designs of a similar character against

another female with whom he was nearly connected.

When Lady Grange's strange history was first communicated to the

public, it was believed that the cause of her abduction was not merely

her violent temper, but her possession of certain secrets which would

enable her to compromise the safety of her husband and his friends, by

proving their connexion with the Jacobite intrigues of the period. The

view more lately taken of the mystery, has been that she was merely

a mad woman, and that her abduction, with all its laborious mystery,

was only an attempt to accommodate the judge with a resource in which

Scotland was then deficient--a lunatic asylum for insane relatives.

Though, as we shall presently see, his confidential communications give

other and darker revelations, this was the light in which Lord Grange

wished the matter to be viewed, after his plot had been discovered; and

in his controversial letter to Mr Hope, already referred to, he gives

an account of her frantic outbreaks, which certainly affords a picture

of one likely to have been a most distressing partner in life to a

grave judge, having a few secrets to conceal which required him to be

peculiarly circumspect in his walk; and holding a high, but a rather

precarious position, in the opinion of the religious world. After

stating that she had agreed to a separation, he continues--

"Then it was hoped that I and the children (who she used

to curse bitterly when they went dutifully to wait on her)

would be in quiet; but she often attacked my house, and from

the streets, and among the footmen and chairmen of visitors,

cried and raged against me and mine, and watched for me in the

streets, and chased me from place to place in the most indecent

and shameless manner, and threatened to attack me on the bench,

which, dreading she would do every time I went to it, made my

duty there very heavy on me, lest that honourable Court of

Session should be disturbed and affronted on my occasion. And

not content with these, and odd and very bad contrivances about

the poor children, she waited on a Sunday's afternoon that my

sister, Lady Jane Paterson, with my second daughter, came out

of the Tron Church, and on the street, among all the people,

fell upon her with violent scolding and curses, and followed

her so down Merlin's Wynd, till Lady Jane and the child near

the bottom of it got shelter from her and being exposed to the

multitude in a friend's house. You also know, and may well

remember, that before you and the rest advised the separation,

and till she went from my house, she would not keep herself in

that part of it (the best apartment) which was assigned her,

but abused all in the family, and when none were adverting,

broke into the room of ane old gentlewoman, recommended to me

for housekeeper, and carried off and destroyed her accompts,

&c., and committed outrages, so that at length I was forced to

have a watch in my house, and especially in the night time, as

if it had been in the frontier of an enemy's country, or to be

spoiled by robbers."[23]

This was doubtless the truth, but not the whole truth. Founding

apparently on these statements, which are Lord Grange's vindication of

himself, the editor of the collection of letters says--"The letters

now printed must considerably impair the mystery of the reasons which

led to the abduction of Lady Grange. They may be held conclusively

to refute the supposition that the affair had any connexion with the

political intrigues of the period." On the contrary, we cannot read

the confidential portion of the correspondence without feeling that

it almost conclusively establishes the fact, that the affair _had_ a

"connexion with the political intrigues of the period;" and that the

reason why so many people of rank and political influence aided the

plot, why the removal was conducted with so much secrecy, and the place

of seclusion was so remote and inaccessible, was because Lady Grange

was possessed of dangerous secrets, which compromised her husband and

his friends. The general tone of the letters, and their many cautious

and mysterious, yet unmistakeable references to the proceedings of

friends across the water, show that the judge confided to the owner of

the old mansion at the foot of Bennochie some things which it would be

dangerous for an enemy to know. But we shall cite just one passage,

which we consider sufficient of itself to support our position. It is

taken from a letter dated 22d March 1731, just ten months before his

wife was seized and carried off. There is something very peculiar in

the structure of the letter; and, whether in pursuit of some not very

appreciable joke, or to waylay the penetration of any hostile party

who, might take the liberty of opening the packet on its journey, the

writer speaks of himself during the most curious and important part

of it, in the third person. Talking of a very difficult and hazardous

project in which he is about to be engaged, he thus passes a neat

commendation on himself,--"but I am sure he never yet was frightened

from what was right in itself, and his duty towards his friends, by his

own trouble or danger, and he seems as little frighted now, as ever in

his life." He then approaches the subject of his wife's character and

intentions, like a man treading on the verge of a frightful pitfall.

"I have found that, in such a case, there is no bounds set to such

mischief, and it is pushed on though it should go the length of your

utter ruin, _and of Tyburn itself, or the Grassmarket_,"--the one being

the place where the gibbet of London, the other where that of Edinburgh

stood. From such portentous associations he passes immediately to his

wife and her proceedings. To make the passage more distinct, we fill

up the names, of which the letter contains only the first and last

letters; it will be remarked that he still assumes the third person,

and that he himself is the person about to depart for London.

"Then I am told that Lady Grange is going to London. She knows nothing

of _his_ going, nor is it suspected here, nor shall be till the day

before he goes off, and so she cannot pretend it is to follow him. She

will certainly strive to get access to Lady Mary Wortley, Lady Mar's

sister, (whom she openly blesses for her opposition to our friends,)

and to all where her malice may prompt her to hope she can do hurt to

us. You will remember with what lying impudence she threatened Lord

Grange, and many of his friends, with accusations of high treason and

other capital crimes, and spoke so loud of her accusing directly by a

signed information to Lord Justice-Clerk, that it came to his ears,

and she was stopped by hearing he said, that, if the mad woman came

to him, he would cause his footmen turn her down stairs. What effect

her lies may have, where she is not so well known, and with those who,

from opposition to what Lord Grange is about, may think their interest

to encourage them, one cannot certainly know; but _if proper measures

be not fallen on against it, the creature may prove troublesome_; at

any rate, this whole affair will require a great deal of diligence,

caution, and address."[24]

He talks of her as mad: and so far as passion and the thirst of

vengeance make people mad, she undoubtedly was so. He speaks of

her intended accusations as lies--that is, of course, a convenient

expression to use towards them. But what is very clearly at the bottom

of all the trepidation, and doubt, and difficulty, is, that she might

be able, mad and false as she was, to get facts established which

called up very ugly associations with Tyburn and the Grassmarket. A

minute incident stated in the common histories of the affair, that

Lady Grange planned a journey to London for the purpose of taking her

accusation to the fountain-head of political power, is confirmed by

this extract. It may easily be believed that, among Grange's official

colleagues--some of whom had also their own secrets to keep--the

lady's frantic accusations met with little encouragement. The

Justice-Clerk referred to in the extract, Adam Cockburn of Ormiston,

was, like Grange himself, a great professed light of the church, and

what sort of interview he would have held with the furious lady, may

be inferred from the character given of him by a contemporary,--"He

became universally hated in Scotland, where they called him the curse

of Scotland; and when ladies were at cards, playing the nine of

diamonds, commonly called 'the curse of Scotland,' they called it the

Justice-Clerk. He was, indeed, of a hot temper, and violent in all his

measures."[25]

In the old narratives of the affair, it is stated that Grange felt his

position to be the more dangerous, as some letters had been intercepted

tending to inculpate him with the Jacobites on the Continent. It is

singular that this should also be pretty satisfactorily proved by

the present correspondence. It will be remembered that Grange was a

brother of the Earl of Mar, whose prominence in the affairs of 1715 had

driven him into exile. A strong attachment to this unfortunate man is,

on the whole, the most pleasing feature in the character of the more

cautious and more fortunate judge. It was natural that the brothers

should keep up a correspondence, and quite as natural that Sir Robert

Walpole should be particularly anxious to discover what they said to

each other. Grange conducted some negotiations with the government for

his brother's pardon and restoration, and we find him defeated in his

aim, and receiving some very significant hints about the nature of his

correspondence.

"Sir Robert told me in wrath that he would have nothing to do with Lord

Mar, that he had dealt ill with him, and he should not have his pardon;

and he would by no means give me any reason for it, but Lord Townsend

did, whom they had stirred up; for he in anger told me Sir Robert had

intercepted his letters to me with very odd things in them, injurious

to Sir Robert and his friends.... Soon after this, Ilay, with cloudy

looks, began to make insinuations of some discoveries against me too,

and at length told me that Sir Robert said that he had also intercepted

bad letters of mine to Lord Mar, but confessed they were not directed

to Lord Mar, and neither subscribed by me nor in my hand of write, but

that by the contents they knew them to be mine to Lord Mar. I answered

that they might assert what they pleased of letters said to be directed

to me, and which they owned I had never seen, but that I must know of

letters wrote by myself, and that I ever wrote any such was a damned,

villainous, malicious lie; and let Sir Robert or any else be the

asserter of it, whoever did assert it, was a liar."[26]

This is a very successful outbreak of virtuous indignation, and does

considerable credit to its author, as a pupil of that school of which

his dear friend Lord Lovat was the undoubted head.

We cannot help considering that it is a question of some historical

interest and importance whether the abduction of Lady Grange was or

was not a measure adopted for political reasons, and that the letters

before us, by finally deciding the question, throw an important light

on the political state of Scotland in the early part of the eighteenth

century. If we suppose that the lady was carried under circumstances

of such profound mystery, and by the agency of some conspicuous and

distinguished personages, to the distant island of St Kilda, merely

because she was a lunatic who required to be in custody, we only see

that many important and sagacious people were taking a very complex

and cumbrous method of accomplishing what might have been done with

ease; for in those days, few would have troubled themselves about the

wretched woman, if her husband had chosen to keep her in any place of

confinement, telling the neighbourhood that she was insane. But when we

find that the Jacobite party in Scotland were powerful enough to kidnap

a person obnoxious to them, and keep her for nine years in a place to

which the laws of the realm and the authority of the crown nominally

extended, but where their own power was the real operative authority,

we have a very formidable notion of the strength and compactness of the

Jacobite union during Walpole's apparently powerful ministry.

The correspondence of Lord Grange admits its reader to a species

of confidential intercourse with him, which can scarcely be called

agreeable. It exhibits one of the most disgusting of all the moral

diseases--the rankling of the arrow of disappointment in the heart

of a defeated political schemer. It is not the man of brave and

bold designs baffled, or the utopian enthusiast disappointed of the

fulfilment of his golden dreams, or the adherent of one absorbing

political idea looking at it lying broken to pieces at his feet: in

all of these there is a dash of noble and disinterested sentiment, and

the politician defeated in his conflict with the world has still the

consolation of an honest if mistaken heart, into which he can retire

without the sting of self-reproach. But all Grange's disappointments

were connected with paltry schemes of personal aggrandisement. Fawn and

flatter as he might, Sir Robert Walpole, and his Scottish coadjutor

Ilay, knew him and distrusted him, and, when he came to court them,

gave him but fair words, and sometimes not even that. With Sir Robert

he carried on an unequal war. Believing that he could scourge the

minister in parliament, while he was a judge of the Court of Session,

he resolved to obtain a seat, and thereupon the all-powerful minister

at once checkmated him, by carrying an act to prohibit judges of the

Court of Session from holding seats in the House of Commons--it was a

less invidious proceeding than the dismissal of his lordship from the

bench would have been, and it had the appearance of being dictated

by a desire for the public good. Grange preferred the senate to the

bench, and resigned his judgeship, but he never achieved political

eminence. In the mean time he acquired Dr Johnson's desideratum of an

honest hatred towards his enemy, and indeed hatred appears to have been

the only honest ingredient in his character. He expressed it so well

towards Walpole, that we must quote his confidential opinion of that

mighty statesman:--

"An insolent and rapacious minister, who has kept us under

the expense of war in time of peace, yet hindered us to

fight to vindicate our trade, so grossly violated by Spanish

robberies, and when we could have put a stop to it, and

corrected them without drawing upon us the arms of any other

nation, maintained his hollow and expensive peace by ridiculous

contradictory treaties, trying us to take part in all the

quarrels of Europe, and sometimes to be on both sides, and at

the same time allowing confederacies to go on so powerful, and

which we are not of, that now when a war is breaking out we

know not where to turn us; laying plots to devour the land by

new swarms of officers of the revenue, to put the merchants'

stocks in the possession of these vermin, and trade under

their power, &c., as by that most damned excise scheme; openly

protecting the frauds and villains that plunder the stocks

and ruin multitudes, and must sink the kingdom; plundering

the revenue, and using all his art, and power, and bribes

to stop all inquiry into, or the least amendment of these

things, either by parliament or otherwise; openly ridiculing

all virtue and uprightness; enhancing all power to himself

and his brother, and suffering almost none else to do or know

anything; barefaced and avowed bribing of members of parliament

and others, and boasting of it; heaping up immense wealth to

himself and his most abject profligate creatures of both sexes,

while the public treasure and trade of the nation is ruined;

suffering and encouraging these locusts to get large bribes,

and giving considerable employment at their recommendation,

while men of merit and service, and of the best families and

interest, are neglected or abused, employing insignificant

brutes or the greatest rogues, and favouring almost none but

such; maltreating and insulting all whom his rascals and jades

complain of. But the list is too long to go through with

here."[27]

Grange thought at one time that he had great claims on Walpole, and

Lord Ilay; and he seems to have very diligently performed one class

of duties which politicians sometimes think sufficient to establish

a claim for reward--he had been an indefatigable petitioner for

ministerial favours. We have heard somewhere of a story of a political

economist, who during a long walk is pestered by an Irish beggar, who

asks his honour just to give him a sixpence, "for the love of God." The

economist turns round to argue the matter: "I deny," says he, "that I

would be showing my love to the Deity by giving an idle rascal like you

money; if you can state any service you have ever done to me worth the

sixpence, you shall have it."--"Why, then," says the mendicant thus

appealed to, "haven't I been keeping your honour in discourse this

half hour?" Such seems to have been the character of Grange's claim on

the ministry--he kept them in unceasing "discourse" as a petitioner.

Not that he did not profess some claims of another kind. "During all

this time," he says, "I ran their errands and fought their battles

in Scotland." Nor did he fail sometimes to allude to his services

as a religious professor, so ill-requited, that he taunts Ilay with

having "already effectually interposed for Tom (now Baron) Kennedy,

who had been Queen's advocate, and obnoxious to all the Presbyterian

party, _which I was not_." And how was he rewarded for all this

running errands, fighting battles, and being religious enough not to

be obnoxious? "Ilay showed me no countenance, and Argyle shunned to

see me.... He [Ilay] never speaks nor writes to me of any business,

but to shame me (as you have seen) about my own: and, these three or

four years past, has visibly to all the world drawn off by degrees from

all familiarity with me, and has dropped me even from his conversation

about trifles or mirth. I could give you many strong instances of

this." Here is an incident told with a pathos sufficient to move a

whole antechamber to tears:--

"Before I came from London in November last, he bade me wait

on Sir Robert at his levee. I told him I had always done so,

but was not in the least noticed, or had so much as a smile

or a gracious nod from him. But said he, 'I promise you I'll

tell him to take particular notice of you, and to assure you of

favour, and that he will do for you: which (said his lordship)

will make my game more easy when I ask anything for you;' and

he bid me come to him that he might carry me to the levee in

his coach. This was done, and I set myself in Sir Robert's eye

in the front of the crowd that surrounded him, and Ilay was

by and looking on. Sir Robert came and went by me without the

least regard. Ilay slipt into another room; and, that I might

not wait longer in so silly a figure, I made up without being

called to the great knight; and told him I came to testify my

respect, and ask his commands for Scotland. His answer, with a

very dry look, and odd air was, 'I have nothing to say to you,

my lord. I wish you a good journey.' I saw Ilay afterwards, and

he said there was nothing in it. Sir Robert had only forgot,

and I am sure (said he) he will do for you what I desired

him."[28]

In the sequel he exclaims, "Can such usage be bore, even by the spirit

of a poor mouse!"--deeming probably that its endurance by a _rat_ was

quite out of the question.

It is singular enough to find from these revelations of Lord Grange's

character and habits, that while he was plotting the abduction of one

mad woman, he was busily engaged in attempting the release of another.

Yes, as a first step, he was intending to release her; but there are

a few hints, slight in themselves, but wonderfully suggestive when

they are associated with his wife's history, showing us that his

ultimate intention was to make a second victim. In this scheme he was

defeated by a spirit less crafty but more audacious than his own--by

no less renowned a person than Lady Mary Wortley Montague, whose

name has already been mentioned as "openly blessed" by Lady Grange

for her "opposition to our friends," meaning the Jacobites. We have

among the papers the history of the baffled attempt--at least one

side of the history, and, when shaken free of the dust of Grange's

prolix grumblings, it is infinitely amusing. The intended victim in

this instance was Lady Mar, Lady Mary's sister, the wife of Grange's

brother. Lady Mar was insane, and in some shape or other committed

to the guardianship of her sister. There were some pecuniary matters

depending on the question of her detention or release, so vaguely

hinted at that it is not easy to discover their nature. It would appear

that Lady Mar was allowed by the favour of the court, and probably

through the interest of her relatives, a jointure of £500 a-year over

the estates which were forfeited from her husband. Lord Mar was then

living in poverty abroad; and Lord Grange was inclined to think that

this sum would be better administered by himself and his friends than

by Lady Mary. Looking at the £500 from his own side, he of course saw

Lady Mary on the other, and judged that her motives were as parallel

to his own as the one jaw of a shark is to the other--so he says,

"Lady Mar, they say, is quite well; and so as in common justice she

can no longer be detained as a lunatic; but she is obstinately averse

to appearing in chancery, that the sentence may be taken off. Her

sister probably will oppose her liberty, for thereby she would lose,

and Lord Mar in effect gain, £500 yearly: and the poor lady, being

in her custody, and under her management, had need to be very firmly

recovered, for the guardian may at present so vex, tease, and plague

her, that it would turn anybody mad."[29]

It was believed that if Lady Mar were released from Lady Mary Wortley

Montague's influence, means might be taken for so arranging matters

that her husband should participate in her jointure. There was another

matter, however, in which Grange himself had a more particular prospect

of pecuniary advantage. Lady Mar appears to have had a beneficiary

interest in a lease of a house in Whitehall, forming part of the

royal demesne. An arrangement seems to have been made by which,

during her incapacity from insanity, her own term was conveyed to her

brother-in-law, Lord Grange, while he at the same time obtained a

reversion of the lease in his own favour. He had, it appears, sold his

whole interest in the property--both the lease he had obtained from

Lady Mar's guardians and his own reversionary interest. He was now,

therefore, in endeavouring to procure the release of Lady Mar, on the

ground of her restoration to sanity, about to enable her to revoke the

transference that had been made to him of her own share in the lease.

In his own words, "On Lady Mar's being at freedom, the assignment of

her lease to Lord Grange becomes void, and so does the sale he has

made of it; and in that sale the lease to Lady Mar was valued at £800

sterling, which will be lost by the avoidance of it." Such is the

danger; and now, in a very brief continuation of the quotation, let us

observe the way in which it was to be met, for, considering who was

the writer, it is really well worthy of observation. "Were Lady Mar in

her freedom, _in right hands, she would ratify the bargain_, but if in

her sister's, probably she will not." Such was the plot; she was to be

restored to her freedom that she might be put "in right hands,"--in

hands in which there was no chance of her refusing what might be

demanded. But there was a lion in the way, or rather a lioness, as

we shall see. Lord Grange's anticipations of Lady Wortley Montague's

operations is not the least remarkable of his revelations. It is "the

power within the guilty breast" working as in Eugene Aram's dream.

What Lady Mary suspected it were difficult to say, but he who ventured

to predict her suspicions spoke from his own guilty conscience--spoke

as the kidnapper and secret imprisoner. We pray attention to the

remarkable expressions with which the following quotation closes:--

"May not an artful woman impose on one in such circumstances,

and whose mind cannot yet be very firm? And this is the more to

be feared, because at the beginning of her illness the sister

said loudly, and oftener than once to Lord Grange himself,

that her husband's bad usage had turned her [Lady Mar] mad.

Supposing, then, the sister tell and persuade her to this

purpose: 'You see your husband's friends quite neglect you.

Lord Erskine, though in the place, seldom comes near you.

How easy were it for Lord Grange to have made you a visit on

hearing you are so well. Surely it became the fellow to pay you

that regard, and he would have done it had he any kindness for

you; and, if the husband had, he would have laid such commands

on his son and brother which they could not have resisted. Now,

you may get your freedom, but can you again trust yourself in

their hands? Quite separated from your father's and mother's

friends, and from your country, _locked up in Scotland or

foreign parts, and wholly in their power_, what can you expect?

Your friends here could give you no relief, and you should be

wholly at the barbarous mercy of those whose sense get not

sufficiently the better of their hatred or contempt, as to make

them carry with seeming respect to you till they get you in

their power. _What will they not do when they have you?_"[30]

Such are Lord Grange's "imaginary conversations" of Lady Mary

Wortley--like many others, a more accurate reflection of the thoughts

habitually dwelling in the writer's own mind, than of those of the

person in whose name they are uttered. And then, in continuation, he

paints the formidable effect of the imaginary pleading--"Such things

to a woman so lately of a disturbed brain, constantly inculcated by

so near a relation whom she only sees, and her creatures, and depends

on her entirely for the time--what may they not produce? And if they

have their effect, then the consequences are these: the lady being

at freedom legally, but _de facto_ still under her sister's absolute

government, the bargain about her jointure becomes void, and thereby

she (or rather the sister) gets more by £500 sterling yearly, and our

friend has nothing at all." Then follows the statement about the lease;

and the meaning of the whole is, that Lady Mar, as a free woman, would

be entitled to live with her sister, and dispose of her own property,

unless she were put in the "right hands" to make her "ratify" any

desired bargain.

The interchange of compliments between the parties, when they came to

actual conflict, is extremely instructive. "She concluded with rage,"

says the judge, "that we were both rascals, with many other ridiculous

things." But perhaps more people will think her ladyship's penetration

was not more ridiculously at fault on this than on other occasions.

Horace Walpole left an unfavourable testimony to her treatment of her

sister, when he alluded to "the unfortunate Lady Mar, whom she treated

so hardly when out of her senses." Pope caught up the same charge in

the insinuation--

"Who starves a sister, or denies a debt."

Lord Grange, for his own part, has the merit, when characterising his

opponent, of a coincidence with the illustrious poet--at least in the

bestowal of an epithet. Every one remembers Pope's--

"Avidien and his wife, no matter which;

For him you call a dog, and her a ----."

It is satisfactory to find, on the most palpable evidence, that Lord

Grange had sufficient poetical genius to supply this rhyme, though

whether his poetic powers went any farther, we are unable, and perhaps

no one will ever be able, to determine.

We must quote, unmutilated, one of Grange's conflicts with Avidien's

wife. Though the scene be roughly described, it has an interest, from

the unscrupulous vehemence of the principal actors, and the eminence

of the little group, who cluster round it like a circle of casual

passengers round the centre of disturbance, where the wife and the

brother-bacchanalian compete, on the pavement, for the possession of

some jovial reveller, whose half-clouded mind remains vibrating between

the quiet comforts of home and the fierce joys of the tavern. There is

something affecting in the vacillating miseries of the poor invalid--we

wonder how much of the cruel contest can be true; for, that it is all

true, it is impossible to believe--yet Lady Mary could be violent, and

she could be hard, when she was attacked or baffled; and she had a

rough and unscrupulous nature to combat with, in the historian of their

warfare.

"Lady Mary, perceiving how things were like to go, did what I

was always afraid of, and could not possibly prevent: she went

in rage to her poor sister, and so swaggered and frightened

her, that she relapsed. While she was about that fine piece of

work, Lord Erskine happened to go to Lady Mar's; and in his

presence Lady Mary continued to this purpose with her sister:

'Can you pretend to be well? Don't you know you are still mad?

You shan't get out of my custody; and if Lord Grange and his

confederates bring you before Lord Chancellor, I'll make you,

in open court, in presence of the world, lay your hand on the

Gospel, and swear by Almighty God, whether you can say you are

yet well. Your salvation shall be at stake; for, remember,

perjury infers damnation--your eternal damnation.' So soon as

I was informed of this, I assured my lady (and so did others,)

that in law no such oath could be put to, her, and that Lady

Mary had only said so to fright her. But so strong was the

fright, that nothing we could say was able to set her right

again. And Lady Mary, having thus dismounted her came again

and coaxed her, and (as I found by diverse instances) strove

to give her bad impressions of her family, and everybody but

Lady Mary's sweet self. Yet next day Lady Mar went and dined

at Mr Baillie's in town, and there saw a deal of company, and

behaved very well. And Dr Arbuthnot, who, among others, saw

her there, said he thought her very well; and had not the turn

happened you will presently hear of, he and Dr Monro (son to

Mr Monro who, at the Revolution, was Principal of Edinburgh

College, and is now physician to Bedlam,) and Dr Mead, were

to have gone to her with me next day and afterwards, that

they might have vouched her condition before the chancellor.

I believed it best for me not to be at Mr Baillie's, that all

might appear as it was, free and natural, and not conducted by

any art of mine; only I went thither about seven at night, and

found her in a room with Ladies Harvey, Binning, Murray, Lady

Grizzel Baillie, and others. She was behaving decently, but

with the gravity of one that is wearied and tired. Mr Baillie

himself, and the other gentlemen and ladies, (a great many

being in the next room,) now and then joined us, and she seemed

not in anything discomposed, till the conversation turned on

her sister's late insult, which, it was visible, gave a shock

to her, and disconcerted her; and when Lady Murray and I went

home with her to Knightsbridge, she was so dumpish that she

scarcely said one word. When I went to her next day, I saw how

strongly Lady Mary's physic wrought, and dissipated her poor

returning senses. She had before urged me earnestly to proceed

faster than was fit, to get her before the chancellor, and do

everything needful for her liberation, that she might go to her

husband and family. But now she told me she would not for the

world appear before the chancellor, and that neither she nor

any other must make oath as to her recovery, (at this time,

indeed, it had been a very bold oath); and that she preferred

her soul's salvation to all things. And, among other things,

she said, what a dismal condition shall I be in if, after

all, the chancellor send me back under Mary's government; how

shall I pass my time after such an attempt? In short, she was

bambouzled, and frighted quite. But that her head was really

turned by Lady Mary's threats of damnation, farther appeared

by this instance: Lady Grizzel Baillie and Lady Murray having

gone to take leave of her, (their whole family is gone to Spa,)

when I saw her next day, she gravely told me that Lady Murray

was no more her friend, having endeavoured, when taking leave,

to deprive her of all the comfort left her--the hope of heaven.

And though (said she) I was bred to the Church of England,

and she to that of Scotland, yet merely the difference is not

so great that she must pronounce me in a state of damnation:

and she asked me seriously, what Lady Murray had said to me

about her being damned? Never in my life, madam, answered I,

did she or any London lady speak to me about salvation or

damnation; but I'm sure my Lady Murray loves you as her sister,

and heartily wishes your happiness here and hereafter. Then

she gave me a sealed letter to Lady Murray, begging me to

deliver it and bring an answer. I read it with Lady Murray.

It was long, and all expostulatory why she pronounced her to

be damned; and said many odd things. Lady Murray's answer was

the proper one--short and general, but very kind, which I

also delivered; and Lady Mar said no more to me on that head.

Before she took this turn, perceiving her so vapourish and

easily disconcerted, I would not venture to put the case wholly

on perfect recovery, but stated it also as I really thought

it--viz., recovered from all that could properly be called

lunacy, yet exceeding weak, and apt to be overturned. And I had

prepared a memorial in law on that supposition, which I was

to have laid before Mr Talbot, solicitor-general, and other

counsel, the very day she took this wrong turn; but thereupon

stopt altogether. At parting, she appeared to me as one who,

fearing to provoke a worse fate by attempting to be better, sat

down in a sort of sullen despairing, content with her present

condition, which she (justly) called misery. Thus seemed she to

be as to any sense that remained with her; but all her sense

was clouded, and, indeed, fancies which now perplexed her brain

were, like the clouds, fleeting, inconstant, and sometimes in

monstrous shapes."[31]

We have no more of this affair until the lapse of several months,

when the judge, at the very moment of apparent victory, is routed by

his watchful antagonist. He had obtained possession of Lady Mar--she

was on her way to Scotland, "in right hands," but had not crossed the

border. This was in 1733, a few months after Lady Grange had been

safely conveyed to the grim solitudes of Hesker. Surely some bird of

the air had whispered the matter to Lady Mary; for her measures were

prompt and stern, and they draw from the baffled plotter many hard

expressions and insinuations. "But on the road, she [Lady Mar] was

seized by Lord Chief-Justice's warrant, procured on false affidavit

of her sister Lady Mary, &c., and brought back to London--declared

lunatic, and by Lord Chancellor (whose crony is Mr Wortley, Lady Mary's

husband) delivered into the custody of Lady Mary, to the astonishment

and offence even of all the English, (Sir Robert among the rest;) and

Ilay pretended to be angry at it, yet refused to give me that relief by

the king in council, which by law was undoubtedly competent."[32]

The people with whom his London connexion brought the judge in contact,

display a gathering of dazzling names in the firmament of fashion

and wit. Bolingbroke, Windham, and "the courtly Talbot" are casually

mentioned. Grange says in passing, "I am acquainted with Chesterfield."

He has something to say of "sweet Lepel," the "wife of that Lord Hervey

who last winter wrote the pamphlet against Mr Pulteney, and on Mr

Pulteney's answer, fought with him and was wounded." Arbuthnot, and the

prince of classical collectors, Richard Mead, mix with the ordinary

actors of the scene. Young Murray, not then a crown lawyer--but

sufficiently distinguished for wit, eloquence, and fashionable

celebrity, to have called forth the next to immortal compliments of

Pope--_must_ have been one of the brilliant circle; and in the early

period of his intercourse with his brother's sister-in-law, accident

would be strangely against him, if he did not sometimes meet in the

ordinary circle the pale distorted youth, with noble intellectual

features and an eye of fire, whose war of wit and rancour with "furious

Sappho" left the world uncertain whether to laugh with their fierce

wit, or lament the melancholy picture of perverted genius, exhibited by

a hatred so paltry yet so unquenchable.

In his autobiographical revelations, the economical old judge leaves

some traces of his consciousness that his journeys from Merlyn's Wynd

to Whitehall were a decided transition from the humble to the great

world. He thus describes one of these journeys, in the letter already

cited, in which he gratified his humour by talking of himself in the

third person.

"Lord G. is now pretty well acquainted with the ways there; his

personal charges, he is sure, will be small in comparison; he

will not be in expensive companies or houses, but when business

requires it; nor at any diversion but what he finds necessary

for keeping up the cheerfulness of his own spirit, and the

health of his body. He wears plain and not fine clothes.

When there last he kept not a servant, but had a fellow at

call, to whom he gave a shilling a-day such days as he was to

be at court or among the great, and must have a footman as

necessarily as a coat on his back or a sword by his side. He

never was nice and expensive in his own eating, and less now

than ever; for this winter he has quite lost the relish of

French claret, the most expensive article in London. He is to

travel without a servant, for whom he knows not any sort of use

on the road, and only has a post-boy, whom he must have, had he

twenty servants of his own; and so he travelled last year."[33]

Strange indeed were the social extremes between which this journey

lay. At the one end we see the brilliant assemblages of the most

brilliant age of English fashion. The rays of the wax-lights glitter

back from stars and sword-hilts, diamond buttons and spangles.

Velvet coats, huge laced waistcoats, abundant hoops, spread forth

their luxurious wealth--the air is rich and thick with perfumed

powder--the highest in rank, and wealth, and influence are there, so

are the first in genius and learning. Reverse the picture, and take

the northern end of the journey. In an old dark stone house, at the

end of a dismal alley, Lovat's ragged banditti throttle a shrieking

woman--a guilty cavalcade passes hurriedly at night across the dark

heath--next opens a dreary dungeon in a deserted feudal fortalice--a

boat tosses on the bosom of the restless Atlantic--and the victim is

consigned to the dreary rock, where year follows year, bringing no

change with it but increasing age. The contrast is startling. Yet,

when we read Lady Grange's diary and Lady Mary Wortley's letters

together, they leave one doubtful whether most to shudder at the

savage lawlessness of one end of the island, or the artificial vices

that were growing out of a putrid civilisation in the other.

THE ROYAL PROGRESS.

Question--"What is a King?" Answer--"A monster who devours the human

race." Such was a part of the catechism taught to all the children of

France during the first fervour of the Revolution in 1789. "I wonder

the people should die of want," said a princess during the dreadful

famine of 1774; "for my part, if I was one of them, I should live on

beef-steaks and porter, rather than perish." Such are the feelings

with which the members of the same community, children of the same

family, unhappily sometimes come to regard each other during periods

of democratic excitement, or mutual estrangement. Ignorance, worked

on by falsehood, and misled by ambition, is the main cause of this

fatal severance. Nothing removes it so effectually as bringing them

together. So natural are the feelings of loyalty to the human heart, so

universally do they spring up when the falsehood which has smothered

them is neutralised by the evidence of the senses, that it may be

considered as one of the greatest evils which can afflict society, when

circumstances occur which keep sovereigns aloof from their people, and

one of the greatest blessings when they can rejoin each other. Of this,

a signal example occurred on the return of the royal family of France

from the fatal journey to Varennes, when Barnave, who had been sent

down with Petion, as one of the most vehement and stern republicans,

to bring them back to Paris, was so impressed with the philanthropic

benevolence of the King, and so melted by the heroic magnanimity of

the Queen, that he became thenceforward one of the most faithful

defenders of the royal cause. "How often," says Thiers, in recounting

this remarkable conversion, "would factions the most inveterate be

reconciled, if they could meet and read each other's hearts!"

The sudden change often produced in the general mind, by the veil of

ignorance and prejudice being withdrawn, which had concealed from

them the real character of their rulers, is not to be ascribed merely

to the lustre of royalty, or the dazzling of the public gaze by the

magnificent pageants which, on such occasions, generally surround it.

It arises mainly from a different cause: it is allied to the generous

affections--it springs from the feelings planted by the Author of

nature in the human heart, to bind society together. It is often seen

most strongly when the royal pageants are the most unpretending, and

the royal personages, laying aside their previous state, mingle almost

without distinction, save from the superior grace of their manners,

with the ordinary citizens. It is more like the irresistible gush

of affection which overspreads every heart, when the members, long

severed, of a once united family are reassembled; or when the prodigal

returns to his father's home, only the more dear from the events which

had estranged him from it.

It is sometimes said that loyalty is an instinctive principle, meant

to supply the place of reason before the intellectual faculties

have grown to their full strength among a people, but unnecessary,

and which gradually dies out, when society, under the direction of

self-government, has come to be regulated by the rational faculties.

There never was a greater mistake; and every day's experience may

convince us that it is not only false, but directly the reverse of

the truth. The time will never come, when the aid of loyalty will not

be required to bind society to its chief: and if the time should ever

come that its generous influence is no longer felt, it may safely be

concluded that the sun of national prosperity has set, and that a night

of darkness and suffering is at hand. Mankind cannot be attached, save

in a passing moment of fervour, to an abstract principle, or a vast

community without a head, or something which may supply its want to the

senses. The aid of individuals or localities is required to concentrate

and keep alive the patriotic affections, where they are not centred on

an individual sovereign. What the Acropolis was to Athens, the Capitol

to Rome, St Mark's to Venice, that the sovereign is to a monarchical

community, and so it will remain to the end of the world. All the

fervour of the Revolution could not supply in France the want of one

chief, till Napoleon concentrated the loyal affections on himself. The

real enemy to loyalty is not reason, but selfishness. It dies away, not

under the influence of enlarged education, but under that of augmented

corruption; and till that last stage of national decay has arrived, its

flame will only burn the more steadily from reason adding the fuel by

which it is to be fed.

If any doubt could be entertained, by a well-informed mind, of the

incalculable importance of loyalty, as the chief and often the only

bond which holds society together, it would be removed by two events

which have occurred in our own times,--the Moscow invasion, and the

steadiness of England during the mind-quake of 1848. On the first

occasion, this sacred principle defeated the mightiest armament ever

assembled by the powers of intellect against the liberties of mankind;

on the last, it preserved unshaken and unscathed the ark of the

constitution in the British islands, amidst the deluge which had shaken

the thrones of almost all the other European monarchies. In these two

examples, where two states in the opposite extremes of infancy and

civilisation were successively rescued from the most appalling dangers,

amidst the ruins of all around them, by the influence of this noble

principle, we may discern the clearest proof of its lasting influence

upon man, and of the incalculable blessings it is fitted to confer,

not less in the most enlightened than the most unenlightened ages of

society. But for it, the social institutions of Great Britain would

have been overturned on the 10th April 1848, and England, with all

its education, civilisation, and habits of freedom, would have been

consigned to destruction by a deluge of civilised barbarians, compared

to whom, as Macaulay has well said, those that followed the standard of

Attila or Alaric were humane and temperate warriors. Hence we may learn

how wonderfully loyalty is _strengthened_, instead of being weakened,

by the progress of knowledge and the spread of civilisation in a really

free community; and what force that noble principle acquires when,

to the generous enthusiasm which binds the unlettered warrior to his

chief, is added the determination of freemen to defend a throne which

all feel to be the keystone in the arch of the national fortunes.

It is a fortunate, perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say a

providential circumstance, that a QUEEN, during the late eventful

years, has been on the throne of the British empire. Had a king been

there, still more one of unpopular manner or retired habits, when all

the thrones of Europe were falling around us, the event might have been

very different, and England, with all its glories, have been sunk in

the bottomless pit of revolution. The feelings of loyalty to a Queen,

especially if she is young and handsome, and unites the virtues to

the graces of her sex, are very different from those which, under the

most favourable circumstances, can be awakened in favour of a king.

The natural gallantry of man, the feelings of chivalry, the respect

due to the softer sex, are mingled in overwhelming proportions with

the abstract passions of loyalty when a young and interesting woman,

endowed with masculine energy, but adorned with feminine beauty,

surrounded by the husband of her choice and the children of her love,

is seen braving the risks and enduring the fatigues of a journey

through lands recently convulsed by civil dissension, solely to win

the love of her subjects, to heal the divisions of the great family of

which she forms the head.

History affords numerous examples of the far greater power, in periods

of intestine troubles, queens have than kings in winning the affections

or calming the exasperation of their subjects. Despite all her errors,

notwithstanding her faults, Queen Mary exercised a sway over a large

part of her subjects which no man in similar circumstances could have

done. Austria would have been crushed by the arms of France and Bavaria

in 1744, but for the chivalrous loyalty which led the Hungarian nobles

to exclaim in a transport of generous enthusiasm, "Moriamur pro _Rege_

nostro, Maria Theresa."

"Fair Austria spreads her mournful charms,

The Queen, the beauty, sets the world in arms."

And it is doubtful if all the fervours of the Reformation could have

enabled England to withstand the assault of the Catholic league, headed

by Spain in the time of Philip II., if in defence of the nation had

not been joined the chivalrous loyalty of a gallant nobility to their

queen, as well as the stern resolution of a Protestant people in behalf

of their religion and their liberties.

But the passion of loyalty, as all other passions, requires aliment

for its support. Like love, it can live on wonderfully little hope,

but it absolutely requires some. A look, a smile, a word from a

sovereign, doubtless go a great way; but entire and long-continued

absence will chill even the warmest affections. It is on this account

that royal progresses have so important an influence in knitting

together the bonds which unite a people to their sovereign. They have

one inestimable effect--they make them known to each other. The one

sees in person the enthusiastic affection with which the sovereign is

regarded by the people, the latter the parental interest with which the

people are regarded by their sovereign. Prejudices, perhaps, nourished

by faction or fostered by party, melt away before the simple light of

truth. A few hours of mutual intercourse dispels the alienation which

years of separation, and the continued efforts of guilty ambition

during a generation, may have produced. The generous affections spring

up unbidden, when the evidence of the senses dispels the load of

falsehood by which they had been restrained. Mutual knowledge produces

mutual interest; and the chances of success to subsequent efforts to

bring about an estrangement are materially lessened, by the discovery

of how wide had been the misapprehension which had formerly existed,

and how deep the mutual affection which really dwelt in the recesses of

the heart, and was now brought to light by the happy approximation of

the sovereign and her people.

It was a noble spectacle to behold a young Queen, at a time when

scarce a monarch in Europe was secure on his throne, setting out

with her illustrious consort and family to make a royal progress

through her dominions, and selecting for the first place of her visit

the island which had so recently raised the standard of rebellion

against her government, and for the next the city which had first in

the empire responded to the cry of treason raised in Paris, on the

overthrow of the throne of Louis Philippe. Nor has the result failed

to correspond, even more happily than could have been hoped, to the

gallant undertaking. If it be true, as is commonly reported, that

our gracious sovereign said, "She went to Ireland to _make_ friends,

but to the Land of Cakes to _find_ them," she must by this time have

been convinced that the generous design has, in both islands, proved

successful beyond what her most enthusiastic friends could have dared

to hope. Who could have recognised, in the multitudes which thronged

to witness her passage through Cork, Dublin, and Belfast, and the

universal acclamations with which she was everywhere received by all

classes of her subjects, the chief cities of an island long torn by

civil dissension, and which had only a year before broken out into

actual rebellion against her government? Who could have recognised

in the youthful sovereign visiting the public buildings of Dublin,

like a private peeress, without any of the state of a Sovereign, and

chiefly interested with her royal consort in the institutions devoted

to beneficence, the Head of a Government whom _The Nation_ had so long

represented as callous to all the sufferings of the people? And during

the magnificent spectacle of the royal progress through Glasgow, where

five hundred thousand persons were assembled from that great city,

and the neighbouring counties, to see their Queen--and she passed for

three miles through stately structures, loaded with loyalty, under

an almost continued archway of flags, amidst incessant and deafening

cheers--who could have believed he was in a city in which democratic

revolt had actually broken out only eighteen months before, and the

walls had all been placarded, on the day when London was menaced, with

treasonable proclamations, calling on the people to rise in their

thousands and tens of thousands against the throne? And how blessed

the contrast to the condition of Scotland when her _last Queen_ had

been in that neighbourhood, and the towers of Glasgow cathedral looked

down on Morton issuing from the then diminutive borough, to assail, in

the immediate vicinity at Langside, the royal army headed by Mary, and

drive her to exile, captivity, and death.[34]

We are not foolish enough to expect impossibilities from the Queen's

visit,--how splendid and gratifying soever its circumstances may have

been. We know well how many and deep-rooted are the social evils

which in both islands afflict society, and we are not so simple as to

imagine that they will be removed by the sight of the Sovereign, as

the innocent peasants believe that all physical diseases will be cured

by the royal touch. We are well aware that the impression of even the

most splendid pageants is often only transitory, and that sad realities

sometimes return with accumulated force after they are over, from the

contrast they present to imaginative vision. Still a step, and that,

too, a most important one, has been taken in the right direction. If

great, and, in some respects, lasting good has been done--if evils

remain, as remain they ever will, in the present complicated condition

of society, and the contending interests which agitate its bosom--one

evil, and that the _greatest of all_, is lessened, and that is an

estrangement between the People and their Sovereign. Crimes may return;

but the recurrence of the greatest of all, because it is the parent

of all others--high treason--is for a time, to any extent at least,

rendered impossible. The most sacred and important of all bonds, that

which unites the sovereign and her subjects, has been materially

strengthened. The most noble of all feelings, the disinterested

affection of a people to their Queen, has been called into generous and

heart-stirring action. The "unbought loyalty of men, the cheap defence

of nations," is _not_ at an end. And if the effect of the Royal Visit

were only that, in the greatest cities of her dominions, our gracious

sovereign, in an age unusually devoted to material influences, has

succeeded, by the sweetness and grace of her manners, in causing the

hearts of some hundred thousands of her subjects to throb with loyal

devotion, and, for a time at least, supplanted the selfish by the

generous emotions--the effect is not lost to the cause of order and

the moral elevation of her people.

Dies Boreales.

No. IV.

CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS.

SCENE--_The Pavilion_.

TIME--_One_ P.M.

BULLER--SEWARD--TALBOYS--NORTH.

TALBOYS.

Here he is--here he is! I traced him by Crutch-print to the Van--like

an old Stag of Ten to his lair by the Slot.

SEWARD.

Thank heaven! But was this right, my dear sir?

BULLER.

Your Majesty ought not thus to have secreted yourself from your

subjects.

SEWARD.

We feared you had absconded--abdicated--and retired into a Monastery.

BULLER.

We have all been miserable about you since an early hour in the

morning--invisible to mortal eye since yester bed-going gong--regal

couch manifestly unslept in--tent after tent scrutinised as narrowly

as if for a mouse--Swiss Giantess searched as if by custom-house

officers--no Christopher in the Encampment--what can I compare it

to--but a Bee-hive that had lost its Queen. The very Drones were in a

ferment--the workers demented--dismal the hum of grief and rage--of

national lamentation and civil war.

NORTH.

Billy could have told you of my retreat.

SEWARD.

Billy was in a state of distraction--rushed to the Van--and, finding it

empty, fainted.

NORTH.

Billy saw me in the Van--and I told him to shut the spring smartly--and

be mum.

BULLER.

Villain!

NORTH.

Obedience to orders is the sum-total of Duty. Most of the men seem

tolerably sober--those whom despair had driven to drink have been sent

to sleeping-quarters--the Camp has recovered from its alarm--and is fit

for Inspection by the General Commanding the Forces.

SEWARD.

But have you breakfasted, my dear sir?

NORTH.

Leave me alone for that. What have you all been about?

TALBOYS.

We three started at Five for Luib, in high glee.

NORTH.

What! in face of my prediction? Did I not tell you that in that dull,

dingy, dirty, ochre sunset--in that wan moon and those tallow-candle

stars--I saw the morning's Deluge.

BULLER.

But did you not also quote Sir David Brewster? "In the atmosphere in

which he lives and breathes, and the phenomena of which he daily sees,

and feels, and describes, and measures, the philosopher stands in

acknowledged ignorance of the laws which govern it. He has ascertained,

indeed, its extent, its weight, and its composition; but though he

has mastered the law of heat and moisture, and studied the electric

agencies which influence its condition, he cannot predict, or even

approximate to a prediction, whether on the morrow the sun shall shine,

or the rain fall, or the wind blow, or the lightning descend."

NORTH.

And all that is perfectly true. Nevertheless, we weather-wise and

weather-foolish people--not Philosophers but Empirics--sailors

and shepherds--with all our eyes on the lower and the higher

heavens--gather up prognostications of the character of the coming

time--an hour or a day--take in our canvass and set our storm-jib--or

run for some bay where the prudent ship shall ride at anchor, as

safe and almost as motionless as if she were in a dry-dock; or off

to the far hill-side to look after the silly sheep--yet not so silly

either--for there they are, instinctive of a change, lying secured

by that black belt of Scotch-Firs against the tempest brewing over

Lockerby or Lochmaben--far from the loun Bilholm Braes!--You Three,

started at Five o'clock for Luib?

TALBOYS.

I rejoice we did. A close carriage is in all weathers detestable--your

vehicle should be open to all skyey influences--with nothing about it

that can be set up or let down--otherwise some one or other of the

party--on some pretence or other--will be for shutting you all in. And

then--Farewell, Thou green Earth--Thou fair Day--and ye Skies! It had

apparently been raining for some little time----

NORTH.

For six hours, and more heavily, I do think, than I ever heard it rain

before in this watery world. Having detected a few drops in the ceiling

of my cubiculum, I had slipt away to the Van on the first blash of the

business--and from that hour to this have been under the Waterfall--as

snug as a Kelpie.

TALBOYS.

In we got--well jammed together--a single gentleman, or even two,

would have been blown out--and after some remonstrances with the old

Greys, we were off to Luib. Long before we were nearly half-way up the

brae behind the Camp, Seward complained that the water was running

down his back--but ere we reached the top, that inconvenience and

every other was merged. The carriage seemed to be in a sinking state,

somewhere about Achlian; and rolling before the rain-storm--horses we

saw none--it needed no great power of imagination to fear we were in

the Loch. At this juncture we came all at once close upon--and into--an

appalling crash, and squash, and splash--a plunging, rushing, groaning,

and moaning, and roaring--which for half-a-minute baffled conjecture.

The Bridge--you know it, sir--the old Bridge, that Seward was never

tired of sketching--going--going--gone; down it went--men, horses, all,

at the very parapet, And sent us with a _jaup_ in among the Woods.

NORTH.

Do you mean to say you were on the Bridge as it sunk?

TALBOYS.

I know nothing about it. How should I? We were in the heart of the

Noise--we were in the heart of the Water--we were in the heart of the

Wood--we, the vehicle, the horses--the same horses, I believe, that

were standing behind the Camp when we mounted--though I had not seen

them distinctly since, till I recognised them madly galloping in their

traces up and down the foaming banks.

NORTH.

Were you all on this side of the River?

TALBOYS.

Ultimately we were--else how could we have got here? You seem

incredulous, sir. Mind me--I don't say we were on the Bridge--and

went down with it. It is an open question--and in the absence of

dispassionate witnesses must be settled by probabilities. Sorry that,

though the Driver saved himself, the Vehicle in the mean time should be

lost--with all the Rods.

NORTH.

They will be recovered on a change of weather. How and when got ye back?

TALBOYS.

On horseback. Buller behind Seward--myself before a man who

occasionally wore a look of the Driver. I hope it was he--if it was

not--the _Driver_ must have been drowned. We had now the wind--that is,

the storm--that is, the hurricane in our faces--and the animals every

other minute wheeled about and stood rooted for many minutes to the

road, with their tails towards Cladich. My body had fortunately lost

all sensation hours before we regained the Camp.

NORTH.

Hours! How long did it take you to accomplish the two miles?

TALBOYS.

I did not time it; but we entered the Great Gate of the Camp to the

sound of the Breakfast Bagpipes.

SEWARD.

As soon as we had changed ourselves--as you say in Scotland----

TALBOYS.

Let's bother Mr North no more about it. With exception of the Bridge,

'tis not worth talking of--and we ought to be thankful it was not

Night. Then what a delightful feeling of security now, sir, from

all intrusion of vagrant visitors from the Dalmally side! By this

time communication must be cut off with Edinburgh and Glasgow--_via_

Inverary--so the Camp is virtually insulated. In ordinary weather,

there is no calling the Camp our own. So far back as yesterday only,

8 English--4 German--3 French--29 Italian--1 Irish, all Male, many

mustached--and from those and other countries, nearly an equal number

of Female--some mustached too--"but that not much."

NORTH.

Impossible indeed it is to enjoy one hour's consciousness of secure

solitude, in this most unsedentary age of the world.--Look there. Who

the deuce are you, sir? Do you belong to Cloud-land--and have you made

an involuntary descent in the deluge? Or are you of the earth earthy?

Off, sir--off to the back premises. Enter the Pavilion at your peril,

you Phenomenon. Turn him out, Talboys.

TALBOYS.

Then I must turn out myself. I stepped forth for a moment to the

Front----

NORTH.

And have in that moment been transmogrified into the Man of the Moon. A

false alarm. But methinks you might have been satisfied with the Bridge.

TALBOYS.

It is clearing up, sir--it is clearing up--pails and buckets, barrels

and hogsheads, fountains and tanks, are no longer the order of the day.

Jupiter Pluvius is descending on Juno with moderated impetuosity--is

restricting himself to watering pans and garden engines--there is

reason to suspect, from the look of the atmosphere, that the supplies

are running short--that in a few hours the glass will be up to

Stormy--and hurra, then, for a week of fine, sunshiny, shadowy, breezy,

balmy, angling Weather! Why, it is almost fair now. I do trust that

we shall have no more of those dry, dusty, sandy, gravelly days,

so unlike Lochawe-side, and natural only in Modern Athens or the

Great Desert. Hark! it is clearing up. That is always the way with

thorough-bred rain--desperate spurt or rush at the end--a burst when

blown--dead-beat----

SEWARD.

Mr North, matters are looking serious, sir.

NORTH.

I believe there is no real danger.

SEWARD.

The Pole is cracking----

TALBOYS.

Creacking. All the difference in the world between these two words. The

insertion of the letter E converts danger into safety--trepidation into

confidence--a Tent into a Rock.

BULLER.

I have always forgot to ask if the Camp is insured?

NORTH.

An insurance was effected, on favourable terms, on the Swiss Giantess

before she came into my possession--the Trustees are answerable for the

Van--the texture of the Tents is tough to resist the Winds--and the

stuff itself was re-steeped during winter in pyroligneous acid of my

own invention, which has been found as successful with canvass as with

timber. Deeside, the Pavilion and her fair Sisterhood are impervious

alike to Wet and Dry Rot--Fire and Water.

TALBOYS.

You can have no idea, sir, of the beautiful running of our Drains. When

were they dug?

NORTH.

Yestreen--at dusk. Not a field in Scotland the worse of being

drained--my lease from Monzie allows it--a good landlord deserves

a good tenant; and though it is rather late in the year for such

operations, I ventured on the experiment--partly for sake of the field

itself, and partly for sake of self-preservation. Not pioneers, and

miners, and sappers alone--the whole Force were employed under the

Knave of Spades--open drains meanwhile--to be all covered in--with

tiles--ere we shift quarters.

TALBOYS.

A continuance of this weather for a day or two will bring them up in

shoals from the Loch--Undoubtedly we shall have Eels. I delight in

drain-angling. Silver Eels! Gold Fish! You shall be wheeled out, my

dear sir, in Swing, and the hand of your own Talboys shall disengage

the first "Fish, without fins" from the Wizard's Hook.

SEWARD.

And he shall be sketched by his own Seward, in a moment of triumph, and

lithographed by Schenck for the forthcoming Edition of Tom Stoddart.

BULLER.

And his own Buller shall make the chips fly like Michael Angelo--and

from the marble block evolve a Christopher Piscator not unworthy a

Steele--or a Macdonald.

NORTH.

Lay aside your tackle, Talboys, and let us talk.

TALBOYS.

I am never so talkative as over my tackle.

BULLER.

Lay it aside then, Talboys, at Mr North's request.

TALBOYS.

Would, my dear sir, you had been with me on Thursday, to witness the

exploits of this GRIESLY PALMER. Miles up Glensrae, you come--suddenly

on the left--in a little glen of its own--on such a jewel of a

Waterfall. Not ten feet tall--in the pleasure-grounds of a lowland

mansion 'twould be called a Cascade. But soft as its voice is,

there is something in it that speaks the Cataract. You discern the

Gaelic gurgle--and feel that the Fountain is high up in some spot

of greensward among heather-hills. Snow-white it is not--almost as

translucent as the pool into which it glides. You see through it the

green ledge it slides over with a gentle touch--and seeking its own

way, for a few moments, among some mossy cones, it slips, without

being wearied, into its place of rest, which it disturbs not beyond

a dimple that beautifies the quivering reflection of the sky. A few

birch-trees--one much taller than the rest--are all the trees that are

there--but that sweetest of all scents assures you of the hawthorn--and

old as the hills--stunted in size--but full-leaved and budded as if

in their prime--a few hawthorns close by among the clefts. But why

prattle thus to you, my dear sir?--no doubt you know it well--for what

beautiful secret in the Highlands is unknown to Christopher North?

NORTH.

I do know it well; and your description--so much better than I could

have drawn--has brought it from the dimmer regions of memory, "into the

study of imagination."

TALBOYS.

After a few circling sweeps to show myself my command of my gear, and

to give the Naiad warning to take care of her nose, I let drop this

GRIESLY PALMER, who alighted as if he had wings. A Grilse!

I cried--a Grilse! No, a Sea-trout--an Amber Witch--a White Lady--a

Daughter of Pearl--whom with gentle violence and quick despatch I

solicited to the yellow sands--and folding not my arms, as is usual

in works of fiction, slightly round her waist--but both hands, with

all their ten fingers, grasping her neck and shoulders to put the fair

creature out of pain--in with her--in with her into my Creel--and again

to business. It is on the First Victim of the Day, especially if, as

in this case, a Bouncer, an angler fondly dwells in reminiscence--each

successive captive--however engrossing the capture--loses its distinct

individuality in the fast accumulating crowd; and when, at close of

day, sitting down among the broom, to empty and to count, it is on the

First Victim that the angler's eye reposes--in refilling, it is the

First Victim you lay aside to crown the treasure--in wending homewards

it is on the First Victim's biography you muse; and at home--in the

Pavillon--it is the First Victim you submit to the critical ken of

Christopher--

BULLER.

Especially if, as in this case, she be a Bouncer.

NORTH.

You pride yourself on your recitation of poetry, Talboys. Charm us with

the finest descriptive passage you can remember from the British Poets.

Not too loud--not too loud--this is not Exeter Hall--nor are you about

to address the Water-witch from the top of Ben-Lomond.

TALBOYS.

"But thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave

Of the most living crystal that was e'er

The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave

Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear

Thy grassy banks, whereon the milk-white steer

Grazes; the purest god of gentle waters!

And most serene of aspect, and most clear;

Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters--

A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters!

"And on thy happy shore a Temple still,

Of small and delicate proportion, keeps,

Upon a mild declivity of hill,

Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps

Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps

The finny darter with the glittering scales,

Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;

While, chance, some scatter'd water-lily sails

Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubblin-tales.

"Pass not unblest the Genius of the place!

If through the air a zephyr more serene

Win to the brow, 'tis his; and if ye trace

Along his margin a more eloquent green,

If on the heart the freshness of the scene

Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust

Of weary life a moment lave it clean

With Nature's baptism,--'tis to him ye must

Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust."

NORTH.

Admirably said and sung. Your low tones, Talboys, are earnest and

impressive; and you recite, like all true lovers of song, in the spirit

of soliloquy, as if you were yourself the sole listener. How I hate

Spouting. Your elocutionist makes his mouth a _jet d'eau_--and by his

gestures calls on all the auditors to behold the performance. From the

lips of the man who has music in his soul, the words of inspiration

flow as from a natural fountain, for his soul has made them its

own--and delights to feel in their beauty an adequate expression of its

own emotions.

TALBOYS.

I spoke them, to myself--but I was still aware of _your_ presence, my

dear sir.

NORTH.

The Stanzas are fine--but are they the finest in Descriptive Poetry?

TALBOYS.

I do not say so, sir. Any request of yours I interpret liberally,

and accede to at once. Finer stanzas there may be--many; but I took

them because they first came to heart. "Beautiful exceedingly" they

are--they may not be faultless.

NORTH.

Sir Walter has said--"Perhaps there are no verses in our language of

happier descriptive power than the two stanzas which characterise the

Clitumnus."

TALBOYS.

Then I am right.

NORTH.

Perhaps you are. Scott loved Byron--and it is ennobling to hear one

great Poet praising another: yet the stanzas which so delighted our

Minstrel may not be so felicitous as they seemed to be to his moved

imagination.

TALBOYS.

Possibly not.

NORTH.

In the First Stanza what do we find?, An apostrophe--"Thou Clitumnus,"

not yet quite an Impersonation--a few lines on, an Impersonation of the

Stream--

"----the purest God of gentlest waters!

And most serene of aspect, and most clear."

What is gained by this Impersonation? Nothing. For the qualities here

attributed to the River-God are the very same that had already been

attributed to the water--purity--serenity--clearness. "Sweetest wave of

the most living crystal"--affects us just as much--here I think more

than the two lines about the God. And observe, that no sooner is the

God introduced than he disappears. His coming and his going are alike

unsatisfactory--for his coming gives us no new emotion, and his going

is instantly followed by lines that have no relation to his Godship at

all.

TALBOYS.

Why--why--I really don't know.

NORTH.

I have mildly--and inoffensively to all the world--that is, to all us

Four--shown one imperfection; and I think--I feel there is another--in

this Stanza. "The sweetest wave of the most living crystal" is visioned

to us in the opening lines as the haunt "of river nymph, to gaze and

lave her limbs where nothing hid them,"--and we are pleased; it is

visioned to us, in the concluding line, as "the mirror and the bath for

Beauty's youngest daughters "--and we are not pleased; or if we are,

but for a moment--for it is, as nearly as may be, the same vision over

again--a mirror and a bath!

TALBOYS.

But then, sir--

NORTH.

Well?

TALBOYS.

Go on, sir.

NORTH.

I am not sure that I understand "Beauty's youngest daughters."

TALBOYS.

Why, small maidens from ten to twelve years old, who in their innocent

beauty may bathe without danger, and in their innocent self-admiration

may gaze without fear.

NORTH.

Then is the expression at once commonplace and obscure.

TALBOYS.

Don't say so, sir.

NORTH.

Think you Byron means the Graces?

TALBOYS.

He does--he does--the Graces sure enough--the Graces.

NORTH.

Whatever it means--it means no more than we had before. A descriptive

Stanza should ever be progressive, and at the close complete. To

my feeling, "slaughters" had better been kept far away from the

imagination as from the eyes. I know Byron alludes here to the

Sanguinetto of the preceding Stanza. But he ought not to have alluded

to it--the contrast is complete without such reference--between the

river we are delighting in and the blood-named torrent that has passed

away. Why, then, force such an image back, upon us--when of ourselves

we should never have thought of it, and it is the last image we should

desire to see?

TALBOYS.

Allow me a few minutes to consider----

NORTH.

A day. Will you be so good, Talboys, as tell me in ten words the

meaning of--in the next Stanza--"keeps its memory of Thee"?