of the distinguished place assigned by orientalists to the very learned
Turkish scholar Von Hammer the Austrian; that he had made the profoundest
researches into our art as connected with those early and eminent artists
the Syrian assassins in the period of the Crusaders; that his work had been
for several years deposited, as a rare treasure of art, in the library
of the club. Even the author's name, gentlemen, pointed him out as the
historian of our art--Von Hammer--
"Yes, yes," interrupted Toad-in-the-hole, who never can sit still--"Yes,
yes, Von Hammer--he's the man for a _malleus hæreticorum_: think rightly
of our art, or he's the man to tickle your catastrophes. You all know what
consideration Williams bestowed on the hammer, or the ship carpenter's
mallet, which is the same thing. Gentlemen, I give you another great
hammer--Charles the Hammer, the Marteau, or, in old French, the Martel--he
hammered the Saracens till they were all as dead as door-nails--he did,
believe me."
"_Charles Martel_, with all the honors."
But the explosion of Toad-in-the-hole, together with the uproarious cheers
for the grandpapa of Charlemagne, had now made the company unmanageable.
The orchestra was again challenged with shouts the stormiest for the new
glee. I made again a powerful effort to overrule the challenge. I might
as well have talked to the winds. I foresaw a tempestuous evening; and I
ordered myself to be strengthened with three waiters on each side; the
vice-president with as many. Symptoms of unruly enthusiasm were beginning
to show out; and I own that I myself was considerably excited as the
orchestra opened with its storm of music, and the impassioned glee
began--"_Et interrogatum est à Toad-in-the-hole--Ubi est ille Reporter_?"
And the frenzy of the passion became absolutely convulsing, as the full
chorus fell in--"_Et iteratum est ab omnibus--Non est inventus_"
By this time I saw how things were going: wine and music were making most
of the amateurs wild. Particularly Toad-in-the-hole, though considerably
above a hundred years old, was getting as vicious as a young leopard. It
was a fixed impression with the company that he had murdered the reporter
in the year 1812; since which time (viz. twenty-six years) "ille reporter"
had been constantly reported "Non est inventus." Consequently, the glee
about himself, which of itself was most tumultuous and jubilant, carried
him off his feet. Like the famous choral songs amongst the citizens of
Abdera, nobody could hear it without a contagious desire for falling back
into the agitating music of "Et interrogatum est à Toad-in-the-hole," &c.
I enjoined vigilance upon my assessors, and the business of the evening
proceeded.
The next toast was--_The Jewish Sicarii_.
Upon which I made the following explanation to the company:--"Gentlemen,
I am sure it will interest you all to hear that the assassins, ancient as
they were, had a race of predecessors in the very same country. All over
Syria, but particularly in Palestine, during the early years of the Emperor
Nero, there was a band of murderers, who prosecuted their studies in a very
novel manner. They did not practise in the night-time, or in lonely places;
but justly considering that great crowds are in themselves a sort of
darkness by means of the dense pressure and the impossibility of finding
out who it was that gave the blow, they mingled with mobs everywhere;
particularly at the great paschal feast in Jerusalem; where they actually
had the audacity, as Josephus assures us, to press into the temple,--and
whom should they choose for operating upon but Jonathan himself, the
Pontifex Maximus? They murdered him, gentlemen, as beautifully as if they
had had him alone on a moonless night in a dark lane. And when it was
asked, who was the murderer, and where he was"--
"Why, then, it was answered," interrupted Toad-in-the-hole, "_Non est
inventus_." And then, in spite of all I could do or say, the
orchestra opened, and the whole company began--"Et interrogatum est à
Toad-in-the-hole--Ubi est ille Sicarius? Et responsum est ab omnibus--_Non
est inventus_."
When the tempestuous chorus had subsided, I began again:--"Gentlemen, you
will find a very circumstantial account of the Sicarii in at least three
different parts of Josephus; once in Book XX. sect. v. c. 8, of his
_Antiquities_; once in Book I. of his _Wars_: but in sect. 10 of the
chapter first cited you will find a particular description of their
tooling. This is what he says--'They tooled with small scymetars not much
different from the Persian _acinacæ_, but more curved, and for all the
world most like the Roman sickles or _sicæ_.' It is perfectly magnificent,
gentlemen, to hear the sequel of their history. Perhaps the only case
on record where a regular army of murderers was assembled, a _justus
exercitus_, was in the case of these _Sicarii_. They mustered in such
strength in the wilderness, that Festus himself was obliged to march
against them with the Roman legionary force."
Upon which Toad-in-the-hole, that cursed interrupter, broke out
a-singing--"Et interrogatum est à Toad-in-the-hole--Ubi est ille exercitus?
Et responsum est ab omnibus--Non est inventus."
"No, no, Toad--you are wrong for once: that army _was_ found, and was all
cut to pieces in the desert. Heavens, gentlemen, what a sublime picture!
The Roman legions--the wilderness--Jerusalem in the distance--an army of
murderers in the foreground!"
Mr. R., a member, now gave the next toast--"To the further improvement of
Tooling, and thanks to the Committee for their services."
Mr. L., on behalf of the committee who had reported on that subject,
returned thanks. He made an interesting extract from the report, by which
it appeared how very much stress had been laid formerly on the mode of
tooling, by the fathers, both Greek and Latin. In confirmation of this
pleasing fact, he made a very striking statement in reference to the
earliest work of antediluvian art. Father Mersenne, that learned Roman
Catholic, in page one thousand four hundred and thirty-one[1] of his
operose Commentary on Genesis, mentions, on the authority of several
rabbis, that the quarrel of Cain with Abel was about a young woman; that,
by various accounts, Cain had tooled with his teeth, [Abelem fuisse
_morsibus_ dilaceratum à Cain;] by many others, with the jaw-bone of an
ass; which is the tooling adopted by most painters. But it is pleasing to
the mind of sensibility to know that, as science expanded, sounder views
were adopted. One author contends for a pitchfork, St. Chrysostom for a
sword, Irenæus for a scythe, and Prudentius for a hedging-bill. This last
writer delivers his opinion thus:--
"Frater, probatæ sanctitatis æmulus,
Germana curvo colla frangit sarculo:"
_i.e_. his brother, jealous of his attested sanctity, fractures his
brotherly throat with a curved hedging-bill. "All which is respectfully
submitted by your committee, not so much as decisive of the question, (for
it is not,) but in order to impress upon the youthful mind the importance
which has ever been attached to the quality of the tooling by such men as
Chrysostom and Irenæus."
[Footnote 1: "Page one thousand four hundred and thirty-one"--_literally_,
good reader, and no joke at all.]
"Dang Irenæus!" said Toad-in-the-hole, who now rose impatiently to give the
next toast:--"Our Irish friends; and a speedy revolution in their mode of
tooling, as well as everything else connected with the art!"
"Gentlemen, I'll tell you the plain truth. Every day of the year we take
up a paper, we read the opening of a murder. We say, this is good, this
is charming, this is excellent! But, behold you! scarcely have we read a
little farther, before the word Tipperary or Ballina-something betrays the
Irish manufacture. Instantly we loath it; we call to the waiter; we say,
Waiter, take away this paper; send it out of the house; it is absolutely
offensive to all just taste.' I appeal to every man whether, on finding a
murder (otherwise perhaps promising enough) to be Irish, he does not feel
himself as much insulted as when Madeira being ordered, he finds it to be
Cape; or when, taking up what he takes to be a mushroom, it turns out
what children call a toad-stool. Tithes, politics, or something wrong in
principle, vitiate every Irish murder. Gentlemen, this must be reformed, or
Ireland will not be a land to live in; at least, if we do live there, we
must import all our murders, that's clear." Toad-in-the-hole sat
down growling with suppressed wrath, and the universal "Hear, hear!"
sufficiently showed that he spoke the general feeling.
The next toast was--"The sublime epoch of Burkism and Harism!"
This was drunk with enthusiasm; and one of the members, who spoke to the
question, made a very curious communication to the company:--"Gentlemen,
we fancy Burkism to be a pure invention of our own times: and in fact no
Pancirollus has ever enumerated this branch of art when writing _de rebus
deperditis_. Still I have ascertained that the essential principle of the
art _was_ known to the ancients, although like the art of painting upon
glass, of making the myrrhine cups, &c., it was lost in the dark ages for
want of encouragement. In the famous collection of Greek epigrams made
by Planudes is one upon a very charming little case of Burkism: it is a
perfect little gem of art. The epigram itself I cannot lay my hand upon at
this moment, but the following is an abstract of it by Salmasius, as I find
it in his notes on Vopiscus: 'Est et elegans epigramma Lucilii, (well
he might call it "elegans!") ubi medicus et pollinctor de compacto sic
egerunt, ut medicus ægros omnes curæ suæ commissos occideret:' this was
the basis of the contract, you see, that on the one part the doctor, for
himself and his assigns, doth undertake and contract duly and truly to
murder all the patients committed to his charge: but why? There lies the
beauty of the case--'Et ut pollinctori amico suo traderet pollingendos.'
The _pollinctor_, you are aware, was a person whose business it was to
dress and prepare dead bodies for burial. The original ground of the
transaction appears to have been sentimental: 'He was my friend,' says the
murderous doctor; 'he was dear to me,' in speaking of the pollinctor. But
the law, gentlemen, is stern and harsh: the law will not hear of these
tender motives: to sustain a contract of this nature in law, it is
essential that a 'consideration' should be given. Now what _was_ the
consideration? For thus far all is on the side of the pollinctor: he
will be well paid for his services; but, meantime, the generous, the
noble-minded doctor gets nothing. What _was_ the little consideration
again, I ask, which the law would insist on the doctor's taking? You shall
hear: 'Et ut pollinctor vicissim [Greek: telamonas] quos furabatur de
pollinctione mortuorum medico mitteret doni ad alliganda vulnera eorurn
quos curabat.' Now, the case is clear: the whole went on a principle of
reciprocity which would have kept up the trade for ever. The doctor was
also a surgeon: he could not murder _all_ his patients: some of the
surgical patients must be retained intact; _re infectâ_. For these he
wanted linen bandages. But, unhappily, the Romans wore woollen, on which
account they bathed so often. Meantime, there _was_ linen to be had in
Rome; but it was monstrously dear; and the [Greek: telamones] or linen
swathing bandages, in which superstition obliged them to bind up corpses,
would answer capitally for the surgeon. The doctor, therefore, contracts to
furnish his friend with a constant succession of corpses, provided, and be
it understood always, that his said friend in return should supply him with
one half of the articles he would receive from the friends of the parties
murdered or to be murdered. The doctor invariably recommended his
invaluable friend the pollinctor, (whom let us call the undertaker;) the
undertaker, with equal regard to the sacred rights of friendship, uniformly
recommended the doctor. Like Pylades and Orestes, they were models of a
perfect friendship: in their lives they were lovely, and on the gallows, it
is to be hoped, they were not divided.
"Gentlemen, it makes me laugh horribly, when I think of those two friends
drawing and redrawing on each other: 'Pollinctor in account with Doctor,
debtor by sixteen corpses; creditor by forty-five bandages, two of which
damaged.' Their names unfortunately are lost; but I conceive they must have
been Quintus Burkius and Publius Harius. By the way, gentlemen, has anybody
heard lately of Hare? I understand he is comfortably settled in Ireland,
considerably to the west, and does a little business now and then; but, as
he observes with a sigh, only as a retailer--nothing like the fine thriving
wholesale concern so carelessly blown up at Edinburgh. 'You see what comes
of neglecting business,'--is the chief moral, the [Greek: epimutheon],
as Æsop would say, which he draws from his past experience."
At length came the toast of the day--_Thugdom in all its branches_.
The speeches _attempted_ at this crisis of the dinner were past all
counting. But the applause was so furious, the music so stormy, and the
crashing of glasses so incessant, from the general resolution never again
to drink an inferior toast from the same glass, that my power is not equal
to the task of reporting. Besides which, Toad-in-the-hole now became quite
ungovernable. He kept firing pistols in every direction; sent his servant
for a blunderbuss, and talked of loading with ball-cartridge. We conceived
that his former madness had returned at the mention of Burke and Hare; or
that, being again weary of life, he had resolved to go off in a general
massacre. This we could not think of allowing: it became indispensable,
therefore, to kick him out, which we did with universal consent, the whole
company lending their toes _uno pede_, as I may say, though pitying his
gray hairs and his angelic smile. During the operation the orchestra poured
in their old chorus. The universal company sang, and (what surprised us
most of all) Toad-in-the-hole joined us furiously in singing--
"Et interrogatum est ab omnibus--Ubi est ille Toad-in-the-hole
Et responsum est ab omnibus--Non est inventus."
JOAN OF ARC[1]
IN REFERENCE TO M. MICHELET'S HISTORY OF FRANCE.
What is to be thought of _her_? What is to be thought of the poor shepherd
girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine, that--like the Hebrew shepherd
boy from the hills and forests of Judæa--rose suddenly out of the quiet,
out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration, rooted in deep
pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to the more
perilous station at the right hand of kings? The Hebrew boy inaugurated his
patriotic mission by an _act_, by a victorious _act_, such as no man could
deny. But so did the girl of Lorraine, if we read her story as it was read
by those who saw her nearest. Adverse armies bore witness to the boy as no
pretender: but so they did to the gentle girl. Judged by the voices of all
who saw them _from a station of good will_, both were found true and loyal
to any promises involved in their first acts. Enemies it was that made the
difference between their subsequent fortunes. The boy rose--to a splendor
and a noon-day prosperity, both personal and public, that rang through the
records of his people, and became a byeword amongst his posterity for a
thousand years, until the sceptre was departing from Judah. The poor,
forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not herself from that cup of rest
which she had secured for France. She never sang together with the songs
that rose in her native Domrémy, as echoes to the departing steps of
invaders. She mingled not in the festal dances at Vaucouleurs which
celebrated in rapture the redemption of France. No! for her voice was then
silent: No! for her feet were dust. Pure, innocent, noble-hearted girl!
whom, from earliest youth, ever I believed in as full of truth and
self-sacrifice, this was amongst the strongest pledges for _thy_ side,
that never once--no, not for a moment of weakness--didst thou revel in the
vision of coronets and honor from man. Coronets for thee! O no! Honors, if
they come when all is over, are for those that share thy blood.[2] Daughter
of Domrémy, when the gratitude of thy king shall awaken, thou wilt be
sleeping the sleep of the dead. Call her, King of France, but she will not
hear thee! Cite her by thy apparitors to come and receive a robe of honor,
but she will be found _en contumace_. When the thunders of universal
France, as even yet may happen, shall proclaim the grandeur of the poor
shepherd girl that gave up all for her country--thy ear, young shepherd
girl, will have been deaf for five centuries. To suffer and to do, that was
thy portion in this life; to _do_--never for thyself, always for others;
to _suffer_--never in the persons of generous champions, always in thy
own--that was thy destiny; and not for a moment was it hidden from thyself.
Life, thou saidst, is short: and the sleep which is in the grave, is long!
Let me use that life, so transitory, for the glory of those heavenly dreams
destined to comfort the sleep which is so long. This pure creature--pure
from every suspicion of even a visionary self-interest, even as she was
pure in senses more obvious--never once did this holy child, as regarded
herself, relax from her belief in the darkness that was travelling to meet
her. She might not prefigure the very manner of her death; she saw not in
vision, perhaps, the aërial altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators
without end on every road pouring into Rouen as to a coronation, the
surging smoke, the volleying flames, the hostile faces all around, the
pitying eye that lurked but here and there until nature and imperishable
truth broke loose from artificial restraints; these might not be apparent
through the mists of the hurrying future. But the voice that called her to
death, _that_ she heard for ever.
Great was the throne of France even in those days, and great was he that
sate upon it: but well Joanna knew that not the throne, nor he that sate
upon it, was for _her_; but, on the contrary, that she was for _them_; not
she by them, but they by her, should rise from the dust. Gorgeous were
the lilies of France, and for centuries had the privilege to spread their
beauty over land and sea, until, in another century, the wrath of God and
man combined to wither them; but well Joanna knew, early at Domrémy she had
read that bitter truth, that the lilies of France would decorate no garland
for _her_. Flower nor bud, bell nor blossom, would ever bloom for _her_.
But stop. What reason is there for taking up this subject of Joanna
precisely in this spring of 1847? Might it not have been left till the
spring of 1947? or, perhaps, left till called for? Yes, but it _is_ called
for; and clamorously. You are aware, reader, that amongst the many original
thinkers, whom modern France has produced, one of the reputed leaders is M.
Michelet. All these writers are of a revolutionary cast; not in a political
sense merely, but in all senses; mad, oftentimes, as March hares; crazy
with the laughing-gas of recovered liberty; drunk with the wine-cup of
their mighty Revolution, snorting, whinnying, throwing up their heels, like
wild horses in the boundless pampas, and running races of defiance with
snipes, or with the winds, or with their own shadows, if they can find
nothing else to challenge. Some time or other, I, that have leisure to
read, may introduce _you_, that have not, to two or three dozen of these
writers; of whom I can assure you beforehand that they are often profound,
and at intervals are even as impassioned as if they were come of our best
English blood, and sometimes (because it is not pleasant that people should
be too easy to understand) almost as obscure as if they had been suckled
by transcendental German nurses. But now, confining our attention to M.
Michelet--who is quite sufficient to lead a man into a gallop, requiring
two relays, at least, of fresh readers,--we in England--who know him best
by his worst book, the book against Priests, &c., which has been most
circulated--know him disadvantageously. That book is a rhapsody of
incoherence. M. Michelet was light-headed, I believe, when he wrote it:
and it is well that his keepers overtook him in time to intercept a second
part. But his _History of France_ is quite another thing. A man, in
whatsoever craft he sails, cannot stretch away out of sight when he is
linked to the windings of the shore by towing ropes of history. Facts, and
the consequences of facts, draw the writer back to the falconer's lure from
the giddiest heights of speculation. Here, therefore--in his _France_,--if
not always free from flightiness, if now and then off like a rocket for
an airy wheel in the clouds, M. Michelet, with natural politeness, never
forgets that he has left a large audience waiting for him on earth, and
gazing upwards in anxiety for his return: return, therefore, he does. But
History, though clear of certain temptations in one direction, has separate
dangers of its own. It is impossible so to write a History of France, or
of England--works becoming every hour more indispensable to the
inevitably-political man of this day--without perilous openings for
assault. If I, for instance, on the part of England, should happen to turn
my labors into that channel, and (on the model of Lord Percy going to Chevy
Chase)--
----"A vow to God should make
My pleasure in the Michelet woods
Three summer days to take,"
--probably from simple delirium, I might hunt M. Michelet into _delirium
tremens_. Two strong angels stand by the side of History, whether French
History or English, as heraldic supporters: the angel of Research on the
left hand, that must read millions of dusty parchments, and of pages
blotted with lies; the angel of Meditation on the right hand, that must
cleanse these lying records with fire, even as of old the draperies of
_asbestos_ were cleansed, and must quicken them into regenerated life.
Willingly I acknowledge that no man will ever avoid innumerable errors of
detail: with so vast a compass of ground to traverse, this is impossible:
but such errors (though I have a bushel on hand, at M. Michelet's service)
are not the game I chase: it is the bitter and unfair spirit in which
M. Michelet writes against England. Even _that_, after all, is but my
secondary object: the real one is Joanna, the Pucelle d'Orleans for
herself.