But it is no new lesson to learn, that an inert and unprogressive race,

with pride clinging to decay, and customs withering to enterprise,

cannot harmonise, in legislative provisions, with men who want laws

to assist the steps of advancing civilisation, rather than ways and

means of keeping up old ruins; who prefer to gather the fruits of a

thousand trees, for the planting of which enterprise has explored, and

industry has employed, new and rich domains, to tying up the decaying

branches of a few old ones, to which possibly memory may love to cling,

but under which plain human nature might starve. To expect, in fact,

that men with such opposite characteristics, apart even from their

other elements of discord, should harmonise, when the party weaker

in legislation was the stronger in civilisation, when the party that

stood still had the power of making the other stand still also, was

to expect an impossibility. And this was exactly the nature of the

contest so long carried on in Lower Canada. An ox and a race-horse

had been yoked together in the same legislative harness. But the

misfortune was increased by the race-horse's being subject--however

much he might struggle, and rear, and foam--to the motions of his

dogged companion, and to the necessity of not moving at all, whenever

it pleased his venerable mate to stand still. It is clear, therefore,

that any legislative provision, after the rebellion, which would

restore to the French this ascendency, would be but causing confusion

worse confused--would be but entailing upon both parties constant

contentions, with the probability, if not the certainty, of a final

appeal to arms; in which case England would be left without a friend

in either party--the one looking upon her as their natural enemy--the

other as a power which had always sacrificed its friends when it had

the means of benefiting them--had perpetually raised its defenders very

high, to see how very far it could let them fall.

The party in Upper Canada which had opposed the government step by

step, until it ended with rebellion in conjunction with the French,

was composed of vastly different materials from these its allies. And

it is somewhat singular, but it is nevertheless a fact, that this

party, both as to its strength, and the true causes of its hostility to

England, has never been very thoroughly understood even in the Canadas.

The principle of under-rating enemies was always applied to it by its

opponents in the province. The pernicious habit of looking upon men

with too much contempt to take the measure of their strength, is as bad

in politics as it is in a physical struggle. But the party known as the

government party in Upper Canada, was generally far too self-important

and too great to calculate how many dark-looking clouds it takes to

make a storm. The government of England too, never very clear-sighted

in colonial affairs, and with its Argus eye as directed to Canadian

prospects always suffering from some defect of vision, or looking

through very distorting media, was not very likely to catch the height

and cut of each individual in a colonial multitude, which it scarcely

ever saw even in gross; while the Governors who "did the monarch" in

the province, did not generally betray much taste for sitting down

by the farmer's fireside, and eating apple-sauce and sauerkraut at

his table, where there neither was, nor could have been, recognised a

distinction between the master and the man,--between the lord of the

castle and the cook in the kitchen. Yet such were the places where

governors and rulers might have seen at work the elements of democracy;

might have witnessed the process of education to the levelling system.

An education which, with the vast facilities for independence in

America, irrespective of situation or institutions--men never get over;

and in which they might have traced the natural growth of feelings and

principles, that must, in the very nature of things, be in a state

of continual warfare with the customs, the pride, and the love of

distinction, which are the inalienable offspring of the monarchy, the

aristocracy, and the social system of England. Yet here they never

penetrated either to count the voters or the children. They felt--they

were obliged to feel--that the great wheel of the government, which

was the majority in parliament, often performed extraordinary

revolutions the wrong way. But they knew not how or wherefore. They

never went where they might have studied, and could have understood,

the difficulty; where, to make a long story short, in order to get at

what they missed, and to understand what they did not, the reader has

possibly anticipated the necessity of accompanying us.

From the circumstances attending the early settlement of Upper Canada,

and from the character of the early settlers themselves, the preachers

of the Methodist denomination were not merely almost the only preachers

they had for many years an opportunity of hearing, but were, of all

others, those they most desired to hear. The clergymen of the Church

of England were few, and stationed in the larger towns. But it is one

of the peculiarities of Methodism, that however numerous or scattered

the settlers might have been, the preacher could always manage to

live among them; for he received with his circuit a sort of universal

billeting-ticket, and the houses of all his flock, and all his flock's

friends, thereupon became one vast home to him; and wherever he

happened to take up his temporary abode, he conferred a sort of honour

instead of receiving a favour. The system had another peculiarity

too--at all events, at the early period we are speaking of--it had

no standard of fitness in the way of education for its ministry. Yet

where men of education could never think of penetrating or existing,

these men were willing to go. Where no bishop could dream of sending a

pastor, it is the principle of Methodism to believe the Lord will raise

up or send one. If his talents are none of the brightest, they are

willing to trust to Heaven to make up the deficiency; and certainly, in

some instances, there is much need of it.

It is not difficult to perceive how great must have been the influence

of these preachers over a people so circumstanced: how eagerly--in the

absence of newspapers, and of nearly every means of learning what was

going on in the province, much less in the affairs of the world--the

leading characters of the neighbourhoods gathered round the preacher,

after the meeting was over, at the fireside of some brother of the

Church, to hear the latest news, to get the last newspaper or pamphlet,

and to receive his oracular opinions upon the measures and the men

agitating the country. And in two-thirds of the districts in the

province, these preachers had for years, unopposed and unquestioned,

those opportunities of instilling a political education--which, if they

chose to make use of them, would enable them to plant a crop, whether

of good or of evil, for or against the institutions of England, wholly,

uneradicable,--were there even the same opportunities afforded of

eradicating it that there were of sowing it.

For five successive parliaments in Upper Canada, previous to the

rebellion, each party had alternately the majority in the house--the

one party being known as the Tory or Family Compact; the other as

the Radical or the Saddle-bag faction--a name more truthfully than

elegantly applied to it, on account of its owing its majority to the

exertions of these same Methodist preachers in its favour; and from

their mode of travelling through the country being on horseback,

with large saddle-bags swung on each side of the nag, and, by way

of adding to the picturesque, with a leathern valise strapped on

immediately over his tail. These bags and valise, it was alleged by

their opponents, were always filled--with, we suppose, the necessary

exception of stowage for hymn-books, and the other paraphernalia of

their craft--with papers and pamphlets against the monarchy, the

Church, and the institutions of England, and in favour of the democracy

of the States. But whether the bags and valise were so filled or not;

or whether, indeed, these preachers, at this early period, had it in

their power to treat their friends to as many pamphlets, and papers,

and almanacs--for the last was and is a method of disseminating

political opinions much resorted to in America--as they were accused

of, we shall not undertake to determine. This, however, we certainly

can assert--that if we had out of the whole world to select the most

perfect embodiment of the spirit of hostility to all the pomp, and

pride, and distinction, and deference to rank, incident to monarchy,

wherever it may exist, we should select these same Methodist preachers.

Educated, for the most part, in the United States, or in Canada by

American schoolmasters; with their conferences held in the States; the

seat of their church in the States; their ministers ordained in the

States; their bishops sent from there--for they were all, at this time,

Episcopal Methodists--and the great body of their church flourishing

there,--they imbibed, from the very beginning, American feelings of

hostility to the established Church of England, and to the pride and

love of distinction--to all the characteristics which must exhibit

themselves wherever English society has a footing, and England's

monarchy a representative. Hostility to these was, in truth, the very

genius of their religion. Looked upon with contempt by Episcopal

clergymen, they took a pious revenge in wildly declaiming against the

pride and arrogance of those who derided them, and incidentally pointed

to the luxurious grandeur and sumptuous living of the great dignitaries

of the church, while its poor hard-working curates had scarcely the

means of living. Treated with contumely by the few educated English

who, from time to time, settled among their hearers, they pointed in

their indignation to that country, and to those institutions, where

one man was held no better than another, and where the many could soon

level the pride and bring down the pretensions of the few. Deprived by

law, as they were at this time, of nearly all the rights of Christian

ministers--of the right to marry, and all similar ones, (for both

the government and the church had long contended against men whom

they regarded and believed, in point of education and character, to

be wholly unfit to exercise these sacred functions,) they declaimed

from the very bottom of their hearts against the illiberality and

exclusiveness of English institutions, of English feelings, and of

English pride, in depriving them of these rights; and they applauded,

with equal earnestness, that government under which their church

flourished, in the fullest exercise of the widest privileges of a

Christian denomination. There is no exaggeration on the one side or

on the other in this. It would be offensive to the church and to its

adherents to say, that they regarded these preachers otherwise than we

have described. It would be unjust to the Methodists to say, that they

did not feel, and that they did not act, as we have given them credit

for doing.

But in addition to the effect, political and national, produced by

these preachers, the peculiarity of the Methodist church-government

spread the same influences by many minor, but not less effectual

ramifications. Every little society, in every neighbourhood, had what

is called a class-leader, or local preacher, whose duty it was to

exercise a sort of half-religious and half-civil domination over the

part of the church immediately surrounding him, to give them advice,

settle their differences, and practise the arts of small oratory and

miniature government.

It is not difficult to perceive how this system must have furnished a

leader to every little neighbourhood; how the ambition first formed

by a class-meeting must have wished the larger sphere of a political

one; and how the consciousness of ability to govern a congregation

naturally led to the conviction that the same abilities might be

usefully employed in the magistracy, or even in parliament. And it is

a significant fact, that since the friends of these class-leaders have

been in power, in every neighbourhood where the Methodists have had

a footing, two-thirds of the magistrates appointed by the government

were, and are, these very class-leaders themselves. But, at the time we

are speaking of, the idea of appointing a person a magistrate, whose

only qualification consisted in his exhibiting a stentorian voice at

Methodist meetings, or being an influential member of "his society,"

was utterly repugnant to the feelings of men educated to dislike such

persons, even when they are unpretending, much less when they aspire

to offices of honour and distinction. No class-leaders, therefore,

in neighbourhoods where every man was alike a lord of the soil, saw

themselves looked up to as leaders by the many, at the same time that

they were looked down upon as boorish pretenders by the few. But what

galled them yet more was, that they constantly saw the few placed in

offices of honour and emolument over them, and thus "rubbing in," as

they termed it, the insult and the injustice of their own exclusion.

Like the preachers, too, they pointed, in their indignation and

revenge, to that country and those institutions where the people could

raise the man, and not the crown--where they could not only attain what

they aimed at, but crush what they abhorred.

Partly from this system of religious and political education, and

partly from the great number of Americans who settled in the province

immediately after the revolutionary war, and who came in with, and at

the suggestion of Governor Simcoe, as well as the many who came in

without him--but mainly from the tinge of nationality that all large

communities impart to small ones adjacent to them--the manners, the

customs, the accent, and even the prejudices, of the rural native

population in Upper Canada, are scarcely distinguishable from the

American. Their very slang words are the same, and their dislike of

what they term "blooded critters,"--namely, Englishmen, who cannot help

evincing their inveterate dislike of either associating themselves,

or allowing their families to associate, with persons whose education

and habits they consider beneath them. Every feature, indeed, by which

an Englishman can detect the influence of the levelling system in

the States, particularly among the farming and lower classes, he can

also detect, and fully to the same extent, among all the American,

the Dutch, and most of the rural native Canadian population in Upper

Canada. It would be digressing too far from the main object of this

paper to bring forward examples--and we know hundreds--where English

gentlemen have been subjected to innumerable petty annoyances, (such

as cutting down their fences, and letting the cattle into their

corn-fields,) merely because it became hinted about the neighbourhoods

where they had settled that they were "blooded critters," and refused

to eat at the same table with their labourers, and associate upon an

equal footing with their neighbours, irrespective of their habits,

character, and education; where men have left the harvest-fields as

soon as they discovered that two tables were set in the house; and

where families have been obliged, to avoid inconveniences that could

not be endured, to conform, if not altogether, at least for a time,

to the general usage of admitting no distinction between master and

man. It must suffice for our purpose now, to say that these things

exist--that they exist to the extent that we have described them;

and without going into the question of the policy or the impolicy of

Englishmen not conforming to the general and prevailing customs of

the country in which they settle, or of the merit or demerit of these

customs themselves, all we wish to say here is, that these customs

are, in our humble opinion, inimical to all monarchical education--to

that state of society where rank must be recognised, respectability

distinguished, and refinement preserved, or monarchy cease to exist, or

become a mockery.

But what was the strength of all these natural and unmistakable

elements of hostility to monarchy under any form, and to a people bred

under monarchical institutions in any circumstances? What was the power

of the Methodists, in so far as that was used against the government,

over the constituencies of the province? What was the power of those

who were not Methodists, but who united with them in opposing the

government? And what was the power of the really honest Yankees in

the province, who never hesitated to avow that they hated the British

government, root, branches, and all? And in what way did their united

feelings and intentions develop themselves?

For upwards of a quarter of a century they maintained,--with all the

power and patronage of the government against them; with most of the

talent born in the province, and the whole, or very nearly so, of

that imported into it, against them; and with seven-eighths, yes,

nine-tenths, of the emigrants who were able to purchase property when

they came, or who subsequently became voters, against them,--alternate,

and more than alternate, majorities in parliament. It can answer

no good purpose now, it never answered any, to deny or to disguise

this fact. This class of men formed, as what we have already stated

must have satisfied the reader, fully two-thirds of the electors in

the counties. In the Home District, where M'Kenzie, who headed the

rebellion in 1837, had absolute control over the elections; in the

Midland District, where Mr Bidwell, an American by birth, by education,

and from principle, exercised a similar influence; in the London

District, where Duncombe, who also headed the rebels, could carry any

man into parliament he pleased; what was the character of the voters

in the townships and counties which gave them this power? They were

the Methodists, educated as we have described; they were the Americans

and Dutch, with strong predilections in favour of democracy, and still

stronger dislike of the natural and inevitable characteristics of

society which arise from monarchy itself. In the Gore district, in the

Niagara district, and in the Newcastle district, what do the poll-books

exhibit for the counties which sent member after member, with hardly an

exception, to support M'Kenzie in the parliament, and some of them to

support him in the rebellion? The number of Hezekiahs, and Jedediahs,

and Jonathans, of Eliacums, and Ezekiels, shows pretty clearly what

was their origin, and what were their political predilections. But

these democratic leanings were by no means arbitrarily confined to

names, for there was both a Duke of Wellington and a Horatio Nelson in

the Gore District gaol for treason in 1838. The Duke was a preacher,

and regularly held forth to his fellow prisoners, until the scamp

at last--we suppose to acquire a practical idea of the nature of

sin--stole a watch from one of his companions, and was thereupon

regularly deposed from his high calling; and the scene of his labours

changed from among the political offenders down to the petty larceny

fraternity. All of which may be found duly chronicled in the records of

the sheriff's office of the Gore District for the period.

But there is no circumstance, perhaps, that we could mention, that

could convey a better idea of the relative regard for England and the

United States, of the class of people we have been describing, than

the fact--well known to every person who has lived among them--that a

Yankee schoolmaster, without either education or intelligence--with

nothing on earth to recommend him, save an inveterate propensity for

vapouring and meddling in the affairs, religious and political, of

every sect and class wherever he goes--can, and ever has, exercised

more influence among them in a few months, than a whole neighbourhood

of English gentlemen could in years. And we speak neither from hearsay

nor conjecture: we speak from what we have seen and know, and what is

susceptible of full proof.

The political measures of this party, like all others, soon shaped

themselves into an embodiment of their motives and principles, and

into a means, the most natural and the most certain, of gaining and

keeping power. Ambition, mounted between two saddle-bags, upon a

jog-trot pony, was not likely to shine in the character of a courtier.

A strong nasal accent, and a love of the levelling system, were but

poor recommendations to English gentlemen, and English governors,

for offices of distinction and the command of her Majesty's militia

forces. But both were powerful at the hustings. What they could not

win from the crown they could gain from the electors. What monarchical

feelings and a monarchical education could not brook, democratic

voters would assuredly elevate. The consequences were such as may

be conceived. Their measures became, to all intents and purposes,

democratic. They began by requiring, as indispensable to the proper

"image and transcript," as they called it, of the British constitution,

that the legislative council--analogous to the House of Lords--should

be rendered elective; that the magistracy should be made elective;

that voting by ballot, as it is practised in the States, should be

introduced; and that every officer in the country, from a colonel to

a constable, should be chosen by the people. How much of monarchy

would have been left after all this--how many of the distinguishing

characteristics that the English government imparts to a British

people, would have been discernible, after all these measures were in

full operation, it would not have been very difficult to foresee.

Lord Durham, in speaking of this party, and of that which opposed it,

observes:--

"At first sight it appears much more difficult to form an

accurate idea of the state of Upper than of Lower Canada. The

visible and broad line of demarcation which separates parties,

by the distinctive characters of race, happily has no existence

in Upper Canada. The quarrel is one of an entirely English, if

not British, population. Like all such quarrels, it has, in

fact, created not two but several parties, each of which has

some objects in common with some one of those to which it is

opposed. They differ on one point and agree on another; the

sections which unite together one day are strongly opposed the

next; and the very party which acts as one against a common

opponent, is in truth composed of divisions seeking utterly

different or incompatible objects. It is very difficult to make

out, from the avowals of parties, the real objects of their

struggles; and still less easy is it to discover any cause of

such importance as would account for its uniting any large mass

of the people in an attempt to overthrow, by forcible means,

the existing form of government."

There could not have been anything more mischievously incorrect, or

more likely to lead to unfortunate conclusions, than these statements.

We can safely challenge the whole parliamentary history of the

province, the character of the leading measures and of the leading men,

and the result of every election, for twenty-five years, to find even a

reasonable pretext for them, although we believe they were made in full

conviction of their truth by the nobleman who made them. Of course,

he could not have properly understood what he was writing about. For

six successive elections previous to the rebellion, the whole history

of England does not afford an example of each party's going to the

hustings with so little change in men, measures, principles, or

feelings, as in every one of these. In every new House of Assembly the

same identical leaders, and the same followers, singled out the same

men four years after four years; and neither accidents nor changes, the

reproaches of treason on the one side, or the accusations of corruption

on the other, caused the loss of a man to one party or the gain of one

to the other. The whole heart, soul, and hopes of the two parties were

as distinct and opposite as those of any two parties that ever had an

existence. Nor could it have been otherwise, when the tendencies of the

one were so manifestly against the existence of a fabric, which every

feeling of the other urged them to preserve at all hazards and under

all circumstances.

At last an important event in the history of the province brought

the contest between these parties to an issue. When Sir Francis Head

assumed the government in 1836, he found the party which had opposed it

for so many years with a large majority in Parliament. With the view,

if possible, of reconciling the two parties, and of getting both to

unite with him in furthering the real interests of the province, he

formed an executive council of the leaders of both. But the council

had scarcely been formed, before the leaders of the party which had

been so perpetually in opposition declined remaining in it, unless Sir

Francis would surrender up to them, practically, the same powers that

are enjoyed by the ministry in England. This he neither could nor would

do. An angry correspondence ensued. They significantly pointed, in the

event of the character of the struggle being changed, to aid from the

great democracy of America. He asserted that the great right arm of

England should be wielded, if necessary, to support the crown. They

finally concluded by stopping the supplies. He dissolved the house.

In the election contest which ensued, it was distinctly and

emphatically declared by the government, that the contest was no longer

as between party and party in a colony, but as between monarchy and

democracy in America. Monarchy was, in fact and in truth, the candidate

at the election. And whether the whole of the party engaged in this

desperate opposition participated in the declaration made to Sir

Francis, that they would look for aid to the States, and which elicited

from him the reply, "Let them come if they dare," is not a matter that

they have ever enlightened the public upon. But that he was forced

and obliged to make monarchy the candidate in this election, or let

democracy threaten and bully him out of the country, is a historical

fact, and incontrovertible in the Canadas, but most grossly and most

unfortunately misunderstood in England.

The government party gained the election. But after the contest, the

opposition, seeing their hopes of success--which were founded upon the

plan of embarrassing the government into their measures, by gaining

majorities in parliament and stopping the supplies--all destroyed by

the result of this election; and knowing that immigration was every

year adding to the strength of their opponents, finally determined to

change the struggle from the hustings and the parliament, to the camp

and the battle-field--to risk all in a bold attempt to strike down the

oak at a blow, instead of attempting to destroy it, branch by branch,

by democratic measures and factious legislation. That there were men of

this party who did not approve of this desperate step, and that there

were others who thought it premature, we believe and know; but that the

great body of the party itself sympathised with the leaders in it, and

would have gloried in, and contributed by all the means in their power

to their success, had it been attainable, we are not only sure of, but

could prove by the history of the whole affair, given by those who had

the best means of understanding it.

When Lord Durham arrived in Canada, he found this party in the

situation of masses of threatening, but scattered clouds. Some had

voluntarily withdrawn to the States; others were there, either to

escape arrest, or from consciousness of their guilt in the rebellion.

The great body of the party remained in the province, with all those

feelings towards England and her loyalists, that humbled pride, many

sufferings, a contemptible struggle, and a mortifying defeat, were

likely to engender. But though the storm had passed over, the clouds

were nearly all left. The party had, in reality, gained by experience

much more than it had lost in numbers. It had come to the understanding

that England's great right arm could not be so easily broken. It had

learned, and its friends in the States had learned--what was most

useful to both under the circumstances--that if England's institutions

were to be destroyed in America, it must be done by some other means

than by blows and bayonets.

And it was with this party, thus situated, and composed of the

materials, and influenced by the considerations, we have mentioned,

that Lord Durham proposed, by a union of the provinces, to neutralise

the legislative influence of the French of Lower Canada--to destroy

their supremacy, which was pregnant with rebellion, and to subvert

their power, which had been synonymous with decay. For without the

aid of this party, or a great portion of it, the loyalists could not

accomplish this; much less could it ever be accomplished if this party

should happen to unite with the French. A vast power, too, whether for

good or for evil, and hitherto unknown in a colony, was thrown among

them all to be scrambled for. We mean a power analogous to that of the

ministry in England, and known by the name of a Responsible Government

in Canada. This power, always held in England by the heads of great

parties--by men of lofty intellects and great characters--by men who

were literally invested with the moral worth, the intelligence, the

rank, and the honour of millions--this mighty power was tossed up in

the Canadas like a cap in a crowd, to fall upon the head of whomsoever

it might chance. It mattered not whether it was a Frenchman, the

dearest object of whose existence was the destruction of England's

power, that gained the majority. The cap must be his. It mattered

not whether it was a democrat, whose secret but highest aim was the

annihilation of England's monarchy, that succeeded at the elections:

the mantle of England's honour, and of upholding England's crown

in America, must fall upon him. We should be sorry to propose the

curtailment of a single privilege of a single Briton, in any part of

the world where the flag of his country waves over him. In what we

shall have to say hereafter as to the government of the colonies, we

do not intend doing so. But what we mean to say of this vast power,

which was thrown among the people to be scrambled for at this time

in the Canadas, is, that what in England must have been, from the

very nature of things, a guarantee for all orders in the state being

preserved and protected under it, was in the Canadas, equally from the

nature of things, precisely the reverse. No ministry in England could

be formed without the nobility, the gentry, the wealth--all that owed

its all to the preservation of the institutions of the country--being

represented in it. In the Canadas a ministry could be--yes, from the

very nature of things, a ministry must be--formed, where Frenchmen, who

hated England--where democrats, who hated monarchy, must control the

destinies of England's subjects--the existence of England's empire in

the west. We would not be understood, therefore, as desiring to curtail

a single privilege; but we would, nevertheless, keep edge-tools out of

the hands of madmen and enemies. We would not remove the rope from the

neck of another to put it round our own.

Extraordinary though it seem that human credulity could go so far--if

the character of the parties, if the character even of the measures

of the parties, in Upper Canada was understood--as to expect that the

giving to the one which had opposed the government, as it were by

nature, the power, by uniting with the French, of crushing its enemies

for ever, that it would not do so; that it would not join with its old

allies in dividing the spoils of prosperity, as it had already done

in sharing the mortifications of defeat; that it would not join them,

even for the purpose of having revenge, each of its own enemy in its

own province;--yet such was the hope, such the infatuation of Lord

Durham. He let a little stream of abstract right fall into a whole sea

of French prejudices and democratic infatuations, and he expected that

it would change the great face of the waters. And what has been the

result?--that the little stream has been lost in the great sea; that,

instead of its changing the sea, it has but added to its weight; that

all the prejudices, all the infatuations are left; and the power that

was expected to change them has been converted into tools for them to

work with.

Up to the last election, the French had never fairly recovered their

former influence, or rather had not the opportunity of fully exerting

their powers in the elections. Up to the same period, the reform party,

as they styled themselves in Upper Canada, had laboured under a similar

disadvantage. The latter had suffered for the want of its leaders,

three of whom were outlaws in the States, as well as from other causes.

But at the last election--a fair one for all parties--the French

recovered all their former power, and the Upper Canadian party all its

former counties. The French, therefore, were making all the strides

they could towards the domination that, according to Lord Durham, was

pregnant with rebellion; the reform party had just the opportunity that

he fondly wished for them, of checking the evil, and of establishing an

enlightened and moderate British party between the two extremes. And

what did they do? The measures and the facts must speak for themselves.

The following resolution, moved by Mr Lafontaine, attorney-general

for Lower Canada, taken in the abstract, would seem harmless and fair

enough:--

"Resolved, that this house do now resolve itself into a

committee to take into consideration the necessity of

establishing the amount of losses incurred by certain

inhabitants of Lower Canada during the _political troubles_ of

1837 and 1838, and of providing for the payment thereof."

But when the following commentary of items, intended to be paid under

it, is added to it, the nature of the _political troubles_ of 1837 and

1838, and the intention of the resolution, will be better understood:--

_Items selected from the Report of the Commissioners appointed

to ascertain the Amount of Rebellion Losses in Lower Canada,

and their observations thereon_:--

"No. 1109. Wolfred Nelson, Montreal. Property destroyed,

£23,109, 19s. 5d.; but Dr Nelson deducts the amount of his

liabilities (_for which his creditors have claimed, or may

claim_) and claims the balance only, say £12,379, 12s. 7d.

1089. Pierre Beauchere, St Ours. £69, 10s., quartering

insurgents under the command of 'General Mathiot,' and £131,

6s. 3d. for imprisonment five months and nine days.

1107. Jos. Guimond, Chateauguay, conviction recorded. The wife

claims £8, 10s. for the purchase of the confiscated estate

bought by her.

P. N. Pacaud, Three Rivers. Claims £400 for false imprisonment,

and £25 for expenses there, and £500 for absence from the

Province, to avoid arrest, &c.

27. J. Dorion, M.D., St Ours. Claims £300 as due from Dr

Nelson's estate; £175 for three months' imprisonment, &c.

32. Theophile Robert, Montreal. Conviction recorded. Claims

£215 for loss of time whilst in exile.

34. Cyrille Beaudriault, Sault au Recollet. Claims £268, 16s.

for interest, and £200 profit, on the goods destroyed and

pillaged.

77. Church of St Cyprien, Napierville. The sum of £327, 12s.

6d. was taken from the treasury of the Church, forcibly, by Dr

Cote, against the will and remonstrance of the churchwardens.

398. Jos. Dumouchel, Ste. Martine. Conviction recorded. Claims

£1878, 13s. 9d., including £525 for compensation for seven

years' imprisonment and exile.

564. Etienne Langlois, Blairfindie. Conviction recorded. Claims

£345 for loss of time while in exile, and £34 passage from

Sidney to Canada.

565. Louis Pinsonneau, St Remi. Conviction recorded. Claims

£2275, 10s. 9d., including £855, 15s. for imprisonment and

exile.

634. David Blanchette, St Cyprien. Conviction recorded. Claims

£520, 16s. 8d. for imprisonment and exile.

654. Pierre Lavois, St Cyprien. Conviction recorded. Claims

£300 for being exiled six years, at £50 per annum.

656. Louis Laurelin, St Cyprien, claims £50 for imprisonment

and expenses, having been acquitted.

789. Luc H. Masson, St Benoit, claims £450 for the interruption

of his business during three years.

Euph. Lamard, St Réme. Conviction recorded. Claims £519,

including £150, six years' rent of property destroyed.

838. Archelaus Welch, West Farnham, claims £80, 7s. 6d. loss on

sale of timber, on account of the troubles in 1837.

850. Théodore Béchard, Blairfrudie. Conviction recorded. Claims

£670, 6s. 8d., value of his estate confiscated and purchased by

his wife.

931. Edouard Major, Ste. Scholastique, claims £921, 4s. 7d.,

including £250 for interest, and £150 for the loss of profit,

in discontinuing business.

992. Léandre Ducharme, Montreal. Conviction recorded. Claims

for imprisonment and transportation, living in exile, and

passage home, £262, 5s.

1327. B. Viger, Boucherville, claims £2000. Exile to Bermuda.

1651. C. Baiseune, St Benoit, claims £150 for three years'

exclusion from his profession as a notary, owing to the loss of

his books, when prepared to pass his examination as notary.

1812. J. B. Archambeault, and 216 others, of St Eustache, claim

£489, 13s. for guns taken and not returned to the owners.

1916. Ninety Persons of St Eustache, for guns taken and not

returned, £205, 0s. 10d.

1951. F. Dionne, St Cesaire, claims £12 per annum, or £200 for

his brother, who lost his senses from imprisonment and ill

usage.

2215. H. D'Eschambault, Boucherville, claims the sum of

£12,000, as partner of Dr Nelson, for the creditors of the

joint estate; but as the separate creditors have filed, or will

file, their separate claims, this claim is not inserted. Dr

Nelson also deducted this amount from his claim, as still due

to the creditors of the firm.

2174. L. Perrault, Montreal, claims £500, absence in the United

States, and £1105, loss of business."

That this flagitious calendar of charges was deliberately intended

to be paid by her Majesty's Canadian ministry, it may probably be

more satisfactory to the reader to establish by the testimony of that

ministry itself, than by any statements of our own.

Mr Merritt, the president of the council, and occupying a similar

position in the government of Canada that Lord John Russell does in

the government of England, thus writes to his constituents, who had

addressed him on the subject, and remonstrated against paying these

charges:--"On becoming a member of the government (he was appointed

president of the council upon Mr Sullivan's being raised to the bench,

a short time before the meeting of parliament) _I found their payment

determined on by the administration_." The reader will observe, that it

was against the payment of the items above quoted, that Mr Merritt's

constituents remonstrated. He answered, that their payment was decided

upon before he took office. But he continues:--"My first impression

was, I confess, against it; but I soon became convinced that they

had no alternative. I neither wish to be misunderstood, nor relieved

from responsibility. Although the government approved of Mr Boulton's

amendment, [which was an amendment of its own resolution,] which

excludes those who were sent to Bermuda, I was prepared to vote for

excluding none." That is to say,--Mr Merritt had the manliness to risk

his character, by voting for what his fellow-ministers had convinced

him was necessary. They wanted the manliness to do what they had

previously convinced him, according to their ideas, would be but an act

of justice.

But the fact was, her Majesty's Canadian Executive Council had

calculated too highly upon their own strength, or, having provoked the

storm, they shrunk back in terror at its violence and its consequences.

They were, therefore, obliged to resort to the skin of the fox, to

make up what they found they wanted of that of the lion. And the

substitution was managed after the following manner:

The amendment alluded to by Mr Merritt, or the operative part of it,

was in these words:

"That the losses, so far only as they have arisen from

the total, or _partially unjust, unnecessary_, or wanton

destruction of the dwellings, buildings, property, and effects

of the said inhabitants [of Lower Canada], and by the seizure,

taking, or carrying away of their property and effects, should

be satisfied; provided that none of the persons who have been

convicted of high treason, alleged to have been committed in

that part of this province formerly called Lower Canada, since

the first day of November 1847, or who, having been charged

with high treason, or other offences of a treasonable nature,

and having been committed to the custody of the sheriff in

the gaol of Montreal, submitted themselves to the will and

pleasure of her Majesty, and were thereupon transported to her

Majesty's island of Bermuda, shall be entitled to any indemnity

for losses sustained during or after the said rebellion, or in

consequence thereof."

This amendment is worded carefully enough, and, like Mr Lafontaine's

resolution, is apparently just and harmless in its abstract

signification; but it proves, like the former, a vastly different

matter when its intentions come to be discovered by its practical

application.

It is necessary that the reader should understand that there were a

great number of the French rebels, particularly the leading characters,

who fled the country immediately after the first few contests were

over--and some of them were brave enough not even to wait so long--who

came back under the amnesty, and consequently neither submitted

themselves to the custody of the sheriff of Montreal, nor were

prosecuted in any way: these are, therefore, no matter how high, or

how notorious their treason, exempted from disability, under this

amendment, to claim rebellion losses. Among these was a Doctor Wolfred

Nelson, who was commander-in-chief of the rebels at the battles of

St Denis and St Charles; who fought with them as well as he could;

who published the declaration of independence for the Canadas; who,

after he had made his escape to the States, hovered round the borders

as the leader of the piratical gangs that devastated the country;

and whom General Wood was finally despatched by the United States

government to put down. This individual is now a member of the Canadian

parliament for a French county, and is an _admitted_ claimant, under

Mr Boulton's amendment, for twenty-three thousand pounds, _for his

rebellion losses_. His own words in the debate upon the question

are these:--"As to the claims made for my property, I had sent in a

detailed account of the losses which had occurred, and which amounted

to £23,000, of which £11,000 did not belong to me, but to my creditors.

I mentioned their names, and as far as my memory would serve, that was

the amount." Now, setting aside the doctrine, subversive even of all

traitors' honour, and of all security under any government, that men

may first half destroy a country by rebellion, and afterwards make up

the other half of its destruction by claiming indemnity for incidental

losses; setting aside this question, and viewing the matter in the

abstract light, that all claims for injuries should be paid, we should

like to know who is to pay the creditors of the poor widows of the

soldiers and the loyalists whose blood stained the snows of Canada

in suppressing Dr Wolfred Nelson's rebellion? Who is to feed their

children, who are at this moment--we can vouch for the fact in at least

one instance--shoeless and houseless, wandering upon the world? Yet

Dr Nelson's creditors, on account of Dr Nelson's crime, must be paid.

Who is to pay the creditors of the merchants, of the millers, of the

lumberers, who were ruined by the general devastation that Dr Nelson's

rebellion brought upon Lower Canada? Still Dr Nelson's creditors must

be paid, although he spent the very money in bringing about other

people's ruin. Who is to indemnify the people of England for two

millions sterling spent in putting down Dr Nelson's rebellion? Yet Dr

Nelson's property must be made good, and Dr Nelson's creditors must

be paid, because England was under the necessity of putting down Dr

Nelson's insurrection. And will--can England look on with indifference

while Upper Canada--whose loyalists, when she was without a soldier

to hoist her flag, did it for her--whose people freely and gladly

sacrificed their lives, as well in the hardships as in the struggle

with the traitor and the assassin, and whose trade and property were

wellnigh ruined by this Dr Wolfred Nelson's rebellion--is now called

upon to make good to him money he spent in carrying it on, and property

that shared but the common ruin he brought upon the whole country? Yet

Dr Nelson's payment is now decided upon by the parliament of Canada;

and as the climax of such unheard-of legislation, he voted for it

himself.

When such a coach-and-four as this can walk through Mr Boulton's

amendment, it is needless to spend time upon smaller fry. The loyalists

of Canada have now, or will have, if the governor, or the British

government assents to the measure, to pay for the very torch that

was employed to set fire to their homes; for the guns that were used

to shoot them down by the wayside; for the shoes that an enemy who

challenged them to fight, wore out in running away; for the time that

men who, assassin-like, established hunters' lodges in the States,

for the purpose of cutting down the defenceless, and burning up the

unprotected, were engaged in the conception and execution of their

diabolical designs. These may be strong statements, but they are facts.

We need go no farther than Dr Nelson's case, who claims indemnity for

the very money he spent in buying powder and balls to destroy her

Majesty's subjects, and who claims £12,000 for injury to his property,

while he himself was at the head of gangs of desperadoes laying waste

the whole southern frontier of the province to sustain them.

But, to convey an idea to the English reader of the full extent to

which payment may be, and is contemplated to be, made to parties

engaged in the rebellion, under this amendment, we need but quote the

questions that were put to Mr Lafontaine, before the final vote was

taken on the question, and the manner in which he treated them.

"In committee last night, Colonel Prince stated that a great

deal of uncertainty existed as to the class of persons whom

it was intended by the ministry to pay, under the measure

introduced by them, and he begged Mr Attorney General

Lafontaine to settle the matter explicitly by replying to

certain questions which he would put to him. Colonel Prince

promised, on his part, to regard the replies as final, and

after receiving them, he would allude no further to the

rebellion claims.

He then put the following questions in a deliberate, solemn

manner, pausing between each for an answer.

'Do you propose to exclude, in your instructions to the

commissioners to be appointed under this act, all who aided and

abetted in the rebellion of 1837-1838?'

NO REPLY.

'Do you propose to exclude those, who, by their admissions and

confessions, admitted their participation in the rebellion?'

NO REPLY.

'Do you mean to exclude those whose admission of guilt is at

this very moment in the possession of the government, or of the

courts of law, unless these admissions have been destroyed with

the connivance of honourable gentlemen opposite?'

NO REPLY.

'Do you mean to exclude any of those 800 men who were

imprisoned in the jail of Montreal, for their participation

in the rebellion, and who were subsequently discharged from

custody through the clemency of the government, and whose

claims I understand to exceed some £70,000?'

NO REPLY.

'Do you not mean to pay every one, let his participation in

the rebellion have been what it may, except the very few who

were convicted by the courts-martial, and some six or seven who

admitted their guilt and were sent to Bermuda?'

NO REPLY."

_Montreal Gazette._

But what course did the enlightened reformers of Upper Canada take in

this business--did that party which Lord Durham expressly stated was

made up, for the most part, of men of strong British feelings, and by

whose aid the French domination was to be crushed? Out of the strongest

majority--out of the most united and effective representation of the

whole party that has ever been had since Sir Francis Head assumed

the government of the province, one only voted against the French;

seventeen voted with them, and five found it convenient to be absent.

But, bad as this measure is, and plainly as it shows that England's

friends have been rendered politically powerless in the provinces,

it is even better than the representation scheme, which these two

parties have still more unitedly, and, if anything, more determinedly

endeavoured to push through parliament. The following extracts from

the leading journals of both provinces, will convey an idea of the

intention of this measure, and what it is likely to lead to:--

"The rebellion claims which have roused, in every English

breast, a feeling of strong antipathy against the French

Canadian race, is but an affair of skirmishing, preparatory

to the great battle for perpetual domination in Canada by the

French Canadian race over those whom Mr Lafontaine has styled

their 'natural enemies.' It is the Representation scheme that

is to raise over us, for ever, our 'French Masters.' As an

affair of money, that of the Rebellion Losses is an injury and

insult to every man who obeyed the order of the government

in its time of need. It has planted deeply the seeds of a

never-dying irritation, but it involves not our national

existence. The Representation scheme is a triple iniquity, and

will cement, if the madness of party be strong enough to carry

it, all the little differences of parties among Englishmen,

into one settled, determined hatred of the French race. It is

a triple iniquity--an injury, an insult, and slavery to our

children."--_Montreal Gazette._

"By the Ministerial scheme, then, it is proposed to give the

British Canadian population, say 13 members--as follows:

--Ottawa 2, Argenteuil 1, Drummond (doubtful) 1, Sherbrooke 2,

Shefford 1, Huntingdon 1, Megantic 1, Missisquoi 1, Gaspé 1,

Stanstead 1, Sherbrooke Town 1. Thus leaving 62 members for

the Franco-Canadians--giving the former an increase on their

present number of 3 and the latter of 30! Can this be called a

just proportion? It cannot."--_Montreal Herald._

"That measure extends over the whole of the province--_Lower_

as well as _Upper_ Canada; and one of its leading features

being, according to the testimony of Mr Hincks, to insure to

the French Canadians the perpetuation of their ascendency in

the legislature, as a distinct race, we may look forward in

future to the infliction of the most oppressive measures, upon

the colonists of British origin, which the masters of the

Union may choose to dictate. These are the fruits of radical

ascendency in the executive and the legislature, from Upper

Canada, and the prostration of those of British origin in Lower

Canada."--_British Colonist, Toronto._

Fortunately, however--fortunately even for those it was intended to

invest with so great a power, this measure did not pass. For to give a

naturally unprogressive race legislative superiority over an inevitably

progressive one, is but to prolong a contest, or make more desperate an

immediate struggle. The race that advances will not perpetually strive

with a rope round its neck, or a chain round its leg. If it cannot

loose itself, it will turn round and fight its holders. The French

might have bound the English, but they would have had to fight them. A

miss, however, is as good as a mile. It required a vote of two-thirds

of the whole house to make such a change in the representation.

Fifty-six voters would have done it; they had but fifty-five; so that

this part of the storm at all events has passed over.

But how did the enlightened reformers of Upper Canada act, upon a

measure avowedly and undisguisedly intended to perpetuate French

domination? _Every man of them voted for it._ What a melancholy comment

this is upon the following--the closing reflection of Lord Durham,

upon the government of Canada. What a comment it is upon the attempt

to change a people by a measure; to purge out of Frenchmen errors as

strong as their nature--out of democrats feelings as large as their

souls, by a single pill of abstract right in the shape of responsible

government.

"In the state of mind in which I have described the French

Canadian population, as not only now being, but as likely for a

long while to remain, the trusting them with an entire control

over this province would be, in fact, only facilitating a

rebellion. Lower Canada must be governed now, as it must be

hereafter, by an English population; and thus the policy which

the necessities of the moment force on us, is in accordance

with that suggested by a comprehensive view of the future and

permanent improvement of the province."--_Report Can. E._, p.

127.

But it is not alone that British prosperity is now crushed by the

domination of a retrogressive race, but it is that a British people are

obliged to feel the galling and unnatural fact, that the power of the

government of England is wielded to keep up institutions in America,

to the destruction of which, in Europe, it owes its freedom and its

greatness. It is not alone that loyalty is sickened to the very death

in Upper Canada, at seeing the best gifts of the crown handed over to

political pickpockets--for we hold every man, and we can call upon all

America to second us in it, as no better than a political pickpocket,

who is a democrat in his heart and soul, and whines out "God save the

Queen," to pillage her Majesty's treasury--it is not alone that loyalty

is galled to madness at this, but it is that loyalty is obliged to see

that, however much it may beat these men at the hustings, and by virtue

of the constitution, they can still laugh at all its efforts as long as

they can play the part of French tools. In all history, in short, there

is not a parallel to the state of things at present existing in the

Canadas. To men whose very accents, whose very faces are a living libel

upon all loyalty to England, England has by her legislation given power

to trample under their feet the only friends she had in the hour of her

need. To men who are contending for the perpetuation of institutions

which all Europe was obliged to throw off before it could breathe a

free breath, or extend a free arm, England has by her legislation given

the power, not only to drive her children into the slough of despond,

but to mount upon their shoulders there, and sink them irretrievably.

England has literally in the Canadas made her loyalists political

slaves; her enemies their political task-masters.

HAMILTON, CANADA WEST.

_23d April, 1849._

Dies Boreales.

No. I.

CHRISTOPHER UNDER CANVASS.

* * * * *

SCENE--_Cladich, Lochawe-side_.

TIME--_Sunrise_.

NORTH--BULLER--SEWARD.

* * * * *

NORTH.

"Under the opening eyelids of the Morn!" Mefeels, Amici, at this

moment, the charm of that Impersonation. Slowly awaking from

sleep--scarcely conscious of her whereabouts--bewildered by the

beauty of the revelation, nor recognising her beloved lochs and

mountains--visionary and nameless all as if an uncertain prolongation

of her Summer's Night's Dream.

SEWARD.

I was not going to speak, my dear sir.

NORTH.

And now she is broad awake. She sees the heaven and the earth, nor

thinks, God bless her, that 'tis herself that beautifies them!

SEWARD.

Twenty years since I stood on this knoll, honoured sir, by your

side--twenty years to a day--and now the same perfect peace possesses

me--mysterious return--as if all the intervening time slid away--and

this were not a renewed but a continuous happiness.

NORTH.

And let it slide away into the still recesses of Memory--the Present

has its privileges--and they may be blamelessly, wisely, virtuously

enjoyed--and without irreverence to the sanctity of the Past. Let it

slide away--but not into oblivion--no danger, no fear of oblivion--even

joys will return on their wings of gossamer;--sorrows may be buried,

but they are immortal.

SEWARD.

I see not the slightest change on this Grove of Sycamores. Twenty

years tell not on boles that have for centuries been in their prime.

Yes--that one a little way down--and that one still farther off--_have_

grown--and those striplings, then but saplings, may now be called Trees.

BULLER.

I never heard such a noise.

NORTH.

A cigar in your mouth at four o'clock in the morning! Well--well.

BULLER.

There, my dear sir, keep me in countenance with a Manilla.

NORTH.

The Herb! You have high authority--Spenser's--for "noise."

BULLER.

I said Noise--because it is Noise. Why, the hum of bees overhead is

absolutely like soft sustained thunder--and yet no bees visible in the

umbrage. The sound is like that of one single bee, and he must be a

giant. Ay--there I see a few working like mad--and I guess there must

be myriads. The Grove must be full of bees' nests.

NORTH.

Not one. Hundreds of smokes are stealing up from hidden or apparent

cottages--for the region is not unpopulous, and not a garden without

its hives--and early risers though we be, the _matutinæ apes_ are still

before us, and so are the birds.

BULLER.

They, too, are making a noise. Who says a shilfa cannot sing? Of the

fifty now "pouring his throat," as the poet well says, I defy you to

tell which sings best. That splendid fellow on the birch-tree top--or

yonder gorgeous tyke on the yellow oak--or----

NORTH.

"In shadiest covert hid" the leader of the chorus that thrills the

many-nested underwood with connubial bliss.

SEWARD.

Not till this moment heard I the waterfall.

BULLER.

You did, though, all along--a felt accompaniment.

NORTH.

I know few dens more beautiful than Cladich-Cleugh!

BULLER.

Pardon me, sir, if I do not attempt that name.

NORTH.

How mellifluous!--Cladich-Cleugh!

BULLER.

Great is the power of gutturals.

NORTH.

It is not inaccessible. But you must skirt it till you reach the meadow

where the cattle are beginning to browse. And then threading your way

through a coppice, where you are almost sure to see a roe, you come

down upon a series of little pools, in such weather as this so clear

that you can count the trouts; and then the verdurous walls begin to

rise on either side and right before you; and you begin to feel that

the beauty is becoming magnificence, for the pools are now black, and

the stems are old, and the cliffs intercept the sky, and there are

caves, and that waterfall has dominion in the gloom, and there is

sublimity in the sounding solitude.

BULLER.

Cladick-Cloock.

NORTH.

A miserable failure.

BULLER.

Cladig-Cloog.

NORTH.

Worser and worser.

SEWARD.

Any footpath, sir?

NORTH.

Yes--for the roe and the goat.

BULLER.

And the Man of the Crutch.

NORTH.

Good. But I speak of days when the Crutch was in its tree-bole----

BULLER.

As the Apollo was in its marble block.

NORTH.

Not so good. But, believe me, gentlemen, I have done it with the Crutch.

SEWARD.

Ay, sir, and could do it again.

NORTH.

No. But you two are yet boys--on the sunny side of fifty--and I leave

you, Seward, to act the guide to Buller up Cladich-Cleugh.

BULLER.

Pray, Mr North, what may be the name of that sheet of water?

NORTH.

In Scotland we call it LOCH-OWE.

BULLER.

I am so happy--sir--that I talk nonsense.

NORTH.

Much nonsense may you talk.

BULLER.

'Twas a foolish question--but you know, sir, that by some strange

fatality or another I have been three times called away from Scotland

without having seen _Lock-Owe_.

NORTH.

Make good use of your eyes now, sirrah, and you will remember it all

the days of your life. That is Cruachan--no usurper he--by divine right

a king. The sun is up, and there is motion in the clouds. Saw you ever

such shadows? How majestically they stalk! And now how beautifully

they glide! And now see you that broad black forest, half-way up the

mountain?

BULLER.

I do.

NORTH.

You are sure you do.

BULLER.

I am.

NORTH.

You are mistaken. It is no broad black forest--it is mere gloom--shadow

that in a minute will pass away, though now seeming steadfast as the

woods.

BULLER.

I could swear it is a forest.

NORTH.

Swear not at all. Shut your eyes. Open them. Where now your wood?

BULLER.

Most extraordinary ocular deception.

NORTH.

Quite common. Yet no poet has described it. See again. The same

forest a mile off. No need of trees--sun and cloud make our visionary

mountains sylvan: and the grandest visions are ever those that are

transitory--ask your soul.

BULLER.

Your Manilla is out, my dear sir. There is the case.

NORTH.

Caught like a cricketer. You must ascend Cruachan. "This morning gives

us promise of a glorious day;" you cannot do better than take time by

the forelock, and be off now. Say the word--and I will myself row you

over the Loch. No need of a guide: inclining to the left for an hour

or two after you have cleared yonder real timber and sap wood--and

then for an hour or two, to the right--and then for another hour or

two straight forwards--and then you will see the highest of the three

peaks within an hour or two's walk of you--and thus, by mid-day, find

yourself seated on the summit.

BULLER.

Seated on the summit!

NORTH.

Not too long, for the air is often very sharp at that altitude--and so

rare, that I have heard tell of people fainting.

BULLER.

I am occasionally troubled with a palpitation of the heart--

NORTH.

Pooh, nonsense. Only the stomach.

BULLER.

And occasionally with a determination of blood to the head--

NORTH.

Pooh, nonsense. Only the stomach. Take a calker every two hours on your

way up--and I warrant both heart and head--

BULLER.

Not to-day. It looks cloudy.

NORTH.

Why, I don't much care though I should accompany you--

BULLER.

I knew you would offer to do so, and I feel the delicacy of putting a

decided negative on the proposal. Let us defer it till to-morrow. For

my sake, my dear sir, if not for your own, do not think of it; it will

be no disappointment to me to remain with you here--and I shudder at

the thought of your fainting on the summit. Be advised, my dear sir, be

advised--

NORTH.

Well then, be it so--I am not obstinate; but such another day for the

ascent there may not be during the summer. On just such a day I made

the ascent some half-century ago. I took it from Tyanuilt--having

walked that morning from Dalmally, some dozen miles, for a breathing on

level ground, before facing the steepish shoulder that roughens into

Loch Etive. The fox-hunter from Gleno gave me his company with his

hounds and terriers nearly half-way up, and after killing some cubs we

parted--not without a tinful of the creature at the Fairies' Well--

BULLER.

A tinful of the creature at the Fairies' Well!

NORTH.

Yea--a tinful of the creature at the Fairies' Well. Now I am a

total-abstinent--

BULLER.

A total-abstinent!

NORTH.

By heavens! he echoes me. Pleasant, but mournful to the soul is the

memory of joys that are past! A tinful of the unchristened creature to

the health of the Silent People. Oh! Buller, there are no Silent People

now.

BULLER.

In your company, sir, I am always willing to be a listener.

NORTH.

Well, on I flew as on wings.

BULLER.

What! Up Cruackan?

NORTH.

On feet, then, if you will; but the feet of a deer.

BULLER.

On all-fours?

NORTH.

Yes--sometimes on all-fours. On all-fours, like a frog in his prime,

clearing tiny obstructions with a spang. On all-fours, like an

ourang-outang, who, in difficult places, brings his arms into play. On

all-fours, like the--

BULLER.

I cry you mercy.

NORTH.

Without palpitation of the heart; without determination of blood

to the head; without panting; without dizziness; with merely a

slight acceleration of the breath, and now and then something like

a gasp after a run to a knowe which we foresaw as a momentary

resting-place--we felt that we were conquering Cruachan! Lovely level

places, like platforms--level as if water had formed them, flowing up

just so far continually, and then ebbing back to some unimaginable

sea--awaited our arrival, that on them we might lie down, and from beds

of state survey our empire, for our empire it was felt to be, far away

into the lowlands, with many a hill between--many a hill, that, in its

own neighbourhood, is believed to be a mountain--just as many a man of

moderate mental dimensions is believed by those who live beneath his

shade to be of the first order of magnitude, and with funeral honours

is interred.

BULLER.

Well for him that he is a hill at all--eminent on a flat, or among

humbler undulations. All is comparative.

NORTH.

Just so. From a site on a mountain's side--far from the summit--the

ascender hath sometimes a sublimer--often a lovelier vision--than

from its most commanding peak. Yet still he has the feeling of

ascension--stifle that, and the discontent of insufficiency dwarfs and

darkens all that lies below.

BULLER.

Words to the wise.

NORTH.

We fear to ascend higher lest we should lose what we comprehend: yet

we will ascend higher, though we know the clouds are gathering, and

we are already enveloped in mist. But there were no clouds--no mist

on that day--and the secret top of Cruachan was clear as a good man's

conscience, and the whole world below like the promised land.

BULLER.

Let us go--let us go--let us go.

NORTH.

All knowledge, my dear boy, may be likened to stupendous ranges of

mountains--clear and clouded, smooth and precipitous; and you or I in

youth assail them in joy and pride of soul, not blind but blindfolded

often, and ignorant of their inclination; so that we often are met

by a beetling cliff with its cataract, and must keep ascending and

descending ignorant of our whereabouts, and summit-seeking in vain.

Yet all the while are we glorified. In maturer mind, when experience

is like an instinct, we ascertain levels without a theodolite, and

know assuredly where dwell the peaks. We know how to ascend--sideways

or right on; we know which are midway heights; we can walk in mist and

cloud as surely as in light, and we learn to know the Inaccessible.

BULLER.

I fear you will fatigue yourself--

NORTH.

Or another image. You sail down a stream, my good Buller, which widens

as it flows, and will lead through inland seas--or lochs--down to the

mighty ocean: what that is I need not say: you sail down it, sometimes

with hoisted sail--sometimes with oars--on a quest or mission all

undefined; but often anchoring where no need is, and leaping ashore,

and engaging in pursuits or pastimes forbidden or vain--_with the

natives_--

BULLER.

The natives!

NORTH.

Nay, adopting their dress--though dress it be none at all--and becoming

one of themselves--naturalised; forgetting your mission clean out of

mind! Fishing and hunting with the natives--

BULLER.

Whom?

NORTH.

The natives--when you ought to have been pursuing your voyage

on--on--on. Such are youth's pastimes all. But you had not

deserted--not you: and you return of your own accord to the ship.

BULLER.

What ship?

NORTH.

The ship of life--leaving some to lament you, who knew you only as a

jolly mariner, who was bound afar! They believed that you had drawn up

your pinnace for ever on that shore, in that lovely little haven, among

reeds and palms--unknowing that you would relaunch her some day soon,

and, bounding in her over the billows, rejoin your ship, waiting for

you in the offing, and revisit the simple natives no more!

BULLER.

Methinks I understand now your mysterious meaning.

NORTH.

You do. But where was I?

BULLER.

Ascending Cruackan, and near the summit.

NORTH.

On the summit. Not a whit tired--not a bit fatigued; strong as

ten--active as twenty ownselves on the flat--divinely drunk on draughts

of ether--happier a thousand times, greater and more glorious, than

Jupiter, with all his gods, enthroned on Olympus.

BULLER.

Moderately speaking.

NORTH.

In imagination I hear him barking now as he barked then--a sharp,

short, savage, angry and hungry bark--

BULLER.

What? A dog? A Fox?

NORTH.

No--no--no. An Eagle--the Golden Eagle from Ben-Slarive, known--no

mistaking him--to generations of Shepherds for a hundred years.

BULLER.

Do you see him?

NORTH.

Now I do. I see his eyes--for he came--he comes sughing close by

me--and there he shoots up in terror a thousand feet into the sky.

BULLER.

I did not know the Bird was so timid--

NORTH.

He is not timid--he is bold; but an Eagle does not like to come all at

once within ten yards of an unexpected man--any more than you would

like suddenly to face a ghost.

BULLER.

What brought him there?

NORTH.

Wings nine feet wide.

BULLER.

Has he no sense of smell?

NORTH.

What do you mean, sir?

BULLER.

No offence.

NORTH.

He has. But we have not always all our senses about us, Buller, nor

our wits either--he had been somewhat scared, a league up Glen Etive,

by the Huntsman of Gleno--the scent of powder was in his nostrils; but

fury follows fear, and in a minute I heard his bark again--as now I

hear it--on the highway to Benlura.

BULLER.

He must have had enormous talons.

NORTH.

My hand is none of the smallest--

BULLER.

God bless you, my dear sir,--give me a grasp.

NORTH.

There.

BULLER.

Oh! thumbikins!

NORTH.

And one of his son's talons--whom I shot--was twice the length of mine;

his yellow knobby loof at least as broad--and his leg like my wrist. He

killed a man. Knocked him down a precipice, like a cannon-ball. He had

the credit of it all over the country--but I believe his wife did the

business, for she was half-again as big as himself; and no devil like a

she-devil fighting for her imp.

BULLER.

Did you ever rob an Eyrie, sir?

NORTH.

Did you over rob a Lion's den? No, no, Buller. I never--except on

duty--placed my life in danger. I have been in many dangerous-looking

places among the Mountains, but a cautious activity ruled all my

movements--I scanned my cliff before I scaled him--and as for jumping

chasms--though I had a spring in me--I looked imaginatively down the

abyss, and then sensibly turned its flank where it leaned on the

greensward, and the liberated streamlet might be forded, without

swimming, by the silly sheep.

BULLER.

And are all those stories lies?

NORTH.

All. I have sometimes swam a loch or a river in my clothes--but

never except when they lay in my way, or when I was on an angling

excursion--and what danger could there possibly be in doing that?

BULLER.

You might have taken the Cramp, Sir.

NORTH.

And the Cramp might have taken me--but neither of us ever did--and a

man, with a short neck or a long one, might as well shun the streets in

perpetual fear of apoplexy, as a good swimmer evade water in dread of

being drowned. As for swimming in my clothes--had I left them on the

hither, how should I have looked on the thither side?

BULLER.

No man, in such circumstances, could, with any satisfaction to himself,

have pursued his journey, even through the most lonesome places.

BULLER.

Describe the view from the summit.

NORTH.

I have no descriptive power--but, even though I had, I know better

than that. Why, between Cruachan and Buchail-Etive lie hundreds on

hundreds of mountains of the first, second, and third order--and, for

a while at first, your eyes are so bewildered that you cannot see any

one in particular; yet, in your astonishment, have a strange vision of

them all--and might think they were interchanging places, shouldering

one another off into altering shapes in the uncertain region, did not

the awful stillness assure you that there they had all stood in their

places since the Creation, and would stand till the day of doom.

BULLER.

You have no descriptive power!

NORTH.

All at once dominion is given you over the Whole. You gradually see

Order in what seemed a Chaos--you understand the character of the

Region--its Formation--for you are a Geologist, else you have no

business--no right there; and you know where the valleys are singing

for joy, though you hear them not--where there is provision for the

cattle on a hundred hills--where are the cottages of Christian men

on the green braes sheltered by the mountains--and where may stand,

beneath the granite rocks out of which it was built, the not unfrequent

House of God.

BULLER.

To-morrow we shall attend Divine Service--

NORTH.

At Dalmally.

BULLER.

I long ago learned to like the ritual of the Kirk. I should like to

believe in a high-minded purified Calvinist, who could embrace, in his

brotherly heart, a high-minded purified English Bishop, with all his

Episcopacy.

NORTH.

And why should he not, if he can recognise the Divine Spirit flowing

through the two sets of sensible demonstrations? He can; unless the

constitution of the Anglican Christian Religion wars, either by its

dogmas or by its ecclesiastical ordinances, against his essential

intelligence of Christianity.

BULLER.

And who shall say it does?

NORTH.

Many say it--not I.

BULLER.

And you are wise and good.

NORTH.

Many thousands--and hundreds of thousands, wiser and better. I can

easily suppose a Mind--strong in thought, warm in feeling, of an

imagination susceptible and creative--by magnanimity, study, and

experience of the world, disengaged from all sectarian tenets--yet

holding the absolute conviction of religion--and contemplating, with

reverence and tenderness, many different ways of expression which

this inmost spiritual disposition has produced or put on--having a

firmest holding on to Christianity as pure, holy, august, divine,

true, beyond all other modes of religion upon the Earth--partly from

intuition of its essential fitness to our nature--partly from intense

gratitude--partly, perhaps, from the original entwining of it with

his own faculties, thoughts, feelings, history, being. Well, he looks

with affectionate admiration upon the Scottish, with affectionate

admiration on the English Church--old affection agreeing with new

affection--and I can imagine in _him_ as much generosity required to

love his own Church--the Presbyterian--as yours the Episcopalian--and

that, Latitudinarian as he may be called, he loves them both. For

myself, you know how I love England--all that belongs to her--all that

makes her what she is--scarcely more--surely not less--Scotland. The

ground of the Scottish Form is the overbearing consciousness, that

religion is immediately between man and his Maker. All hallowing of

things outward is to that consciousness a placing of such earthly

things as interpositions and separating intermediates in that interval

unavoidable between the Finite and the Infinite, but which should

remain blank and clear for the immediate communications of the

Worshipper and the Worshipped.

BULLER.

I believe, sir, you are a Presbyterian?

NORTH.

He that worships in spirit and in truth cannot endure--cannot imagine,

that anything but his own sin shall stand betwixt him and God.

BULLER.

_That_, until it be in some way or another extinguished, shall and must.

NORTH.

True as Holy Writ. But intervening saints, images, and elaborate

rituals--the contrivance of human wit--all these the fire of the Spirit

has consumed, and consumes.

BULLER.

The fire of the Presbyterian spirit?

NORTH.

Add history. War and persecution have afforded an element of human hate

for strengthening the sternness----

BULLER.

Of Presbyterian Scotland.

NORTH.

Drop that word--for I more than doubt if you understand it.

BULLER.

I beg pardon, sir.

NORTH.

The Scottish service, Mr Buller, comprehends Prayer, Praise,

Doctrine--all three necessary verbal acts amongst Christians met, but

each in utmost simplicity.

BULLER.

Episcopalian as I am, that simplicity I have felt to be most affecting.

NORTH.

The Praise, which unites the voices of the congregation, must be

written. The Prayer, which is the burning towards God of the soul of

the Shepherd upon the behalf of the Flock, and upon his own, must be

unwritten--unpremeditated--else it is not Prayer. Can the heart ever

want fitting words? The Teaching must be to the utmost, forethought,

at some time or at another, as to the Matter. The Teacher must have

secured his intelligence of the Matter ere he opens his mouth. But the

Form, which is of expediency only, he may very loosely have considered.

That is the Theory.

BULLER.

Often liable in practice, I should fear, to sad abuse.

NORTH.

May be so. But it presumes that capable men, full of zeal, and

sincerity, and love--fervent servants and careful shepherds--have

been chosen, under higher guidance. It supposes the holy fire of the

new-born Reformation--of the newly-regenerated Church-----

BULLER.

Kirk.

NORTH.

Of the newly-regenerated Church, to continue undamped, inextinguishable.

BULLER.

And is it so?

NORTH.

The Fact answers to the Theory more or less. The original

Thought--simplicity of worship--is to the utmost expressed, when the

chased Covenanters are met on the greensward, between the hillside and

the brawling brook, under the coloured or uncoloured sky. Understand

that, when their descendants meet within walls and beneath roofs, they

_would_ worship after the manner of their hunted ancestors.

BULLER.

I wish I were better read than I am, in the history of Scotland, civil

and ecclesiastical.

NORTH.

I wish you were. I say, then, my excellent friend, that the Ritual and

whole Ordering of the Scottish Church is moulded upon, or issues out

of, the human spirit kindling in conscious communication of the Divine

Spirit. The power of the Infinite--that is, the Sense of Infinitude,

of Eternity--reigns there; and the Sense in the inmost soul of the

sustaining contact with Omnipotence, and self-consciousness intense,

and elation of Divine favour personally vouchsafed, and joy of

anticipated everlasting bliss, and triumph over Satan, death, and hell,

and immeasurable desire to win souls to the King of the Worlds.

BULLER.

In England we are, I am ashamed to say it, ill informed on----

NORTH.

In Scotland we are, I am ashamed to say it, ill informed on----

BULLER.

But go on, sir.

NORTH.

What place is there for Forms of any kind in the presence of these

immense overpowering Realities? For Forms, Buller, are of the

Imagination; the Faculty that inhales and lives by the Unreal. But some

concession to the humanity of our nature intrudes. Imagination may be

subordinated, subjugated, but will not, may not, forego all its rights.

Therefore, Forms and hallowing associations enter.

BULLER.

Into all Worship.

NORTH.

Form, too, is, in part, Necessary Order.

BULLER.

Perhaps, sir, you may be not unwilling to say a few words of our Ritual.

NORTH.

I tremble to speak of your Ritual; for it appears to me as bearing

on its front an excellence which might be found incompatible with

religious truth and sincerity.

BULLER.

I confess that I hardly understand you, sir.

NORTH.

The Liturgy looks to be that which the old Churches are, the Work of a

Fine Art.

BULLER.

You do not urge that as an objection to it, I trust, sir?

NORTH.

A Poetical sensibility, a wakeful, just, delicate, simple Taste, seems

to have ruled over the composition of each Prayer, and the ordering of

the whole Service.

BULLER.

You do not urge that as an objection to it, I trust, sir?

NORTH.

I am not urging objections, sir. I seldom--never, indeed--urge

objections to anything. I desire only to place all things in their true

light.

BULLER.

Don't frown, sir--smile. Enough.

NORTH.

The whole composition of the Service is copious and various. Human

Supplication, the lifting up of the hands of the creature knowing his

own weakness, dependence, lapses, and liability to slip--man's own

part, dictated by his own experience of himself, is the basis. Readings

from the Old and New Volume of the Written Word are ingrafted, as if

God audibly spoke in his own House; the Authoritative added to the

Supplicatory.

BULLER.

Finely true. We Church of England men love you, Mr North--we do indeed.

NORTH.

The hymns of the sweet Singer of Israel, in literal translation,

adopted as a holier inspired language of the heart.

BULLER.

These, sir, are surely three powerful elements of a Ritual Service.

NORTH.

Throughout, the People divide, the service with the Minister. They have

in it their own personal function.

BULLER.

Then the Homily, sir.

NORTH.

Ay, the Homily, which, one might say, interprets between Sunday and

the Week--fixes the holiness of the Day in precepts, doctrines,

reflections, which may be carried home to guide and nourish.

BULLER.

Altogether, sir, it seems a meet work of worshippers met in their

Christian Land, upon the day of rest and aspiration. The Scottish

worship might seem to remember the flame and the sword. The persecuted

Iconoclasts of two centuries ago, live in their descendants.

NORTH.

But the Ritual of England breathes a divine calm. You think of the

People walking through ripening fields on a mild day to their Church

door. It is the work of a nation sitting in peace, possessing their

land. It is the work of a wealthy nation, that, by dedicating a part of

its wealth, consecrates the remainder--that acknowledges the Fountain

from which all flows. The prayers are devout, humble, fervent. They are

not impassioned. A wonderful temperance and sobriety of discretion;

that which, in worldly things, would be called good sense, prevails

in them; but you must name it better in things spiritual. The framers

evidently bore in mind the continual consciousness of writing for

ALL. That is the guiding, tempering, calming spirit that

keeps in the Whole one tone--that, and the hallowing, chastening awe

which subdues vehemence, even in the asking for the Infinite, by those

who have nothing but that which they earnestly ask, and who know that

unless they ask infinitely, they ask nothing. In every word, the whole

Congregation, the whole Nation prays--not the Individual Minister; the

officiating Divine Functionary, not the Man. Nor must it be forgotten

that the received Version and the Book of Common Prayer--observe the

word COMMON, expressing exactly what I affirm--are beautiful

by the words--that there is no other such English--simple, touching,

apt, venerable--hued as the thoughts are--musical--the most English

English that is known--of a Hebraic strength and antiquity, yet lucid

and gracious as if of and for to-day.

BULLER.

I trust that many Presbyterians sympathise with you in these sentiments.

NORTH.

Not many--few. Nor do I say I wish they were more.

BULLER.

Are you serious, sir?

NORTH.

I am. But cannot explain myself now. What are the Three Pillars of

the Love of any Church? Innate Religion--Humanity--Imagination. The

Scottish worship better satisfies the first Principle--that of England

the last; the Roman Catholic still more the last--and are not your

Cathedrals Roman Catholic? I think that the Scottish and English,

better than the Roman Catholic, satisfy the Middle Principle--Humanity,

being truer to the highest requisitions of our Nature, and nourish our

faculties better, both of Will and Understanding, into their strength

and beauty. Yet what divine-minded Roman Catholics there have been--and

are--and will be!

BULLER.

Pause for a moment, sir,--here comes Seward.

NORTH.

Seward! Is he not with us? Surely he was, all hour or two ago--but

I never missed him--your conversation has been so interesting and

instructive. Seward! why you are all the world like a drowned rat?

SEWARD.

Rat I am none--but a stanch Conservative. Would I had had a

Protectionist with me to keep me right on the Navigation Laws.

NORTH.

What do you mean? What's the matter?

SEWARD.

Why, your description of the Pools in Cladich-Cleugh inspired me with a

passion for one of the Naïads.

NORTH.

And you have had a ducking!

SEWARD.

I have indeed. Plashed souse, head over heels, into one of the

prettiest pools, from a slippery ledge some dozen feet above the

sleeping beauty--were you both deaf that you did not hear me bawl?

NORTH.

I have a faint recollection of hearing something bray, but I suppose I

thought it came from the Gipsies' Camp.

BULLER.

Are you wet?

SEWARD.

Come--come--Buller.

BULLER.

Why so dry?

NORTH.

Sair drooket.

BULLER.

Where's your Tile?

SEWARD.

I hate slang.

BULLER.

Why, you have lost a shoe--and much delightful conversation.

NORTH.

I must say, Seward, that I was hurt by your withdrawing yourself from

our Colloquy.

SEWARD.

Sir, you were beginning to get so prosy----

BULLER.

I insist, Seward, on your making an apology on your knees to our Father

for your shocking impiety--I shudder to repeat the word--which you must

swallow--P--R--O--S--Y!

SEWARD.

On my knees! Look at them.

NORTH.

My dear, dearer, dearest Mr Seward--you are bleeding--I fear a

fracture. Let me----

SEWARD.

I am not bleeding--only a knap on the knee-pan, sir.

BULLER.

Not bleeding! Why you must be drenched in blood, your face is so white.

NORTH.

A _non sequitur_, Buller. But from a knap on the knee-pan I have known

a man a lamiter for life.

SEWARD.

I lament the loss of my Sketch-Book.

BULLER.

It is a judgment on you for that Caricature.

NORTH.

What caricature?

BULLER.

Since you will force me to tell it, a caricature

of----YOURSELF, sir. I saw him working away at it with a most

wicked leer on his face, while you supposed he was taking notes. He

held it up to me for a moment--clapped the boards together with the

grin of a fiend--and then off to Cladick-Cloock--where he met with

Nemesis.

NORTH.

Is that a true bill, Mr Seward?

SEWARD.

On my honour as a gentleman, and my skill as an artist, it is not. It

is a most malignant misrepresentation----

BULLER.

It was indeed.

SEWARD.

It was no caricature. I promised to Mrs Seward to send her a sketch of

the illustrious Mr North; and finding you in one of the happiest of

your many-sided attitudes----

NORTH.

The act is to be judged by the intention. You are acquitted of the

charge.

BULLER.

To make a caricature of YOU, sir, under any circumstances, and for any

purpose, would be sufficiently shocking; but HERE AND NOW, and that he

might send it to his WIFE--so transcends all previous perpetration of

_crimen læsæ majestatis_, that I am beginning to be incredulous of what

these eyes beheld--nay, to disbelieve what, if told to any human being,

however depraved, would seem to him impossible, even in the mystery of

iniquity, and an insane libel on our fallen nature.

SEWARD.

I did my best. Nor am I, sir, without hope that my Sketch-Book may

be recovered, and then you will judge for yourself, sir, if it be a

caricature. A failure, sir, it assuredly was, for what artist has

succeeded with YOU?

NORTH.

To the Inn, and put on dry clothes.

SEWARD.

No. What care I about dry or wet clothes! Here let me lie down and bask

in this patch of intenser sunshine at your feet. Don't stir, sir; the

Crutch is not the least in the way.

NORTH.

We must be all up and doing--the HOUR and the MEN.

The CAVALCADE. Hush! Hark! the Bagpipe! The Cavalcade can't be

more than a mile off.

SEWARD.

Why staring thus like a Goshawk, sir?

BULLER.

I hear nothing. Seward, do you?

SEWARD.

Nothing. And what can he mean by Cavalcade? Yet I believe he has the

Second Sight. I have heard it is in the Family.

NORTH.

Hear nothing? Then both of you must be deaf. But I forget--we

Mountaineers are Fine-Ears--your sense of hearing has been educated

on the Flat. Not now? "The Campbells are coming,"--that's the

march--that's the go--that's the gathering.

BULLER.

A Horn--a Drum, sure enough--and--and--that incomprehensible mixture of

groans and yells must be the Bagpipe.

NORTH.

See yonder they come, over the hill-top--the ninth mile-stone from

Inverary! There's the VAN, by the Road-Surveyor lent me for

the occasion, drawn by Four Horses. And there's the WAGGON,

once the property of the lessee of the Swiss Giantess, a noble Unicorn.

And there the SIX TENT-CARTS, Two-steeded; and there the

TWO BOAT-CARRIAGES--horsed I know not how. But don't ye see

the bonny BARGES aloft in the air? And Men on horseback--count

them--there should be Four. You hear the Bagpipe now--surely--"The

Campbells are coming." And here is the whole Concern, gentlemen, close

at hand, deploying across the Bridge.

BULLER.

Has he lost his senses at last?

SEWARD.

Have we lost ours? A Cavalcade it is, with a vengeance.

NORTH.

One minute past Seven! True to their time within sixty seconds. This

way, this way. Here is the Spot, the Centre of the Grove. Bagpipe--Drum

and Horn--music all--silence. Silence, I cry, will nobody assist me in

crying silence?

SEWARD AND BULLER.

Silence--silence--silence.

NORTH.

Give me the Speaking-Trumpet that I may call Silence.

SEWARD.

Stentor may put down the Drum, the Horns, the Fifes, and the Serpent,

but the Bagpipe is above him--the Drone is deaf as the sea--the Piper

moves in a sphere of his own--

BULLER.

I don't hear a syllable you are saying--ah! the storm is dead, and now

what a BLESSED CALM.

NORTH.

Wheel into line--Prepare to--

PITCH TENTS.

_Enter the Field of the Sycamore Grove on Horseback--ushered

by Archy M'Callum_--HARRY SEWARD--MARMADUKE

BULLER--VALLANCE VOLUSENE--NEPOS

WOODBURN. _Van, Waggon, Carriages, and Carts, &c., form

a Barricade between the Rear of the Grove and the road to

Dalmally._

Adjutant Archy M'Callum! call the Roll of the Troops.

ADJUTANT.

Peter of the Lodge, Sewer and Seneschal--_Here_. Peterson ditto,

Comptroller of the Cellars--_Here_. Kit Peterson, Tiger there--_Here_.

Michael Dods, Cook at that Place--_Here_. Ben Brawn, Manciple--_Here_.

Roderick M'Crimmon, King of the Pipes---_Here_. Pym and Stretch,

Body-men to the young Englishers---_Here_, _Here_. Tom Moody, Huntsman

at Under-cliff Hall, North Devon---_Here_. The Cornwall Clipper, Head

Game-keeper at Pendragon--_Here_. Billy Balmer of Bowness, Windermere,

Commodore--_Here_.

NORTH.

Attention! Each man will be held answerable for his subordinates. The

roll will be called an hour after sunrise, and an hour before sunset.

Men, remember you are under martial law. Camp-master M'Kellar--_Here_.

Let the Mid Peak of Cruachan be your pitching point. Old Dee-side Tent

in the centre, right in Front. Dormitories to the east. To the west

the Pavilion. Kitchen Range in the Rear. Donald Dhu, late Sergeant in

the Black Watch, see to the Barricade. The Impedimenta in your charge.

In three hours I command the Encampment to be complete. Admittance to

the Field on the Queen's Birth-day. Crowd! disperse. Old Boys! What do

you think of this? You have often called me a Wizard--a Warlock--no

glamour here--'tis real all--and all the WORK OF THE CRUTCH.

Sons--your Fathers! Fathers--your Sons. Your hand, Volusene--and,

Woodburn, yours.

SEWARD.

Hal, how are you?

BULLER.

How are you, Marmy?

NORTH.

On the Stage--in the Theatre of Fictitious Life--such a Meeting

as this would require explanation--but in the Drama of Real Life,

on the Banks of Lochawe, it needs none. Friends of my soul! you

will come to understand it all in two minutes' talk with your

Progeny. Progeny--welcome for your Sires' sakes--and your Lady

Mothers'--and your own--to Lochawe-side. I see you are two Trumps.

Volusene--Woodburn--from your faces all well at home. Come, my two old

Bucks--let us Three, to be out of the bustle, retire to the Inn. Did

you ever see Christopher fling the Crutch? There--I knew it would clear

the Sycamore Grove.

SCENE II.--_Interior of the Pavilion._

TIME--_Two_ P.M.

NORTH--SEWARD--BULLER.

SEWARD.

Still at his Siesta in his Swing-Chair. Few faces bear to be looked on

asleep.

BULLER.

Men's faces.

SEWARD.

His bears it well. Awake, it is sometimes too full of expression. And

then, how it fluctuates! Perpetual play and interchange as Thought,

Feeling, Fancy, Imagination----

BULLER.

The gay, the grave, the sad, the serious, the pathetic, the humorous,

the tragic, the whimsical rules the minute--

"'Tis everything by fits, and nothing long."

SEWARD.

Don't exaggerate. An inapt quotation.

BULLER.

I was merely carrying on your eulogium of his wide-awake Face.

SEWARD.

The prevalent expression is still--the Benign.

BULLER.

A singular mixture of tenderness and truculence.

SEWARD.

Asleep it is absolutely saint-like.

BULLER.

It reminds me of the faces of Chantry's Sleeping Children in Litchfield

Cathedral.

SEWARD.

Composure is the word. Composure is mute Harmony.

BULLER.

It may be so--but you will not deny that his nose is just a minim too

long--and his mouth, at this moment, just a minim too open--and the

crow-feet----

SEWARD.

Enhance the power of those large drooping eyelids, heavy with

meditation--of that high broad forehead, with the lines not the

wrinkles of age.

BULLER.

He is much balder than he was on Deeside.

SEWARD.

Or fifty years before. They say that, in youth, the sight of his head

of hair once silenced Mirabeau.

BULLER.

Why, Mirabeau's was black, and my grandmother told me North's was

yellow--or rather green, like a star.

NORTH.

Your Grandmother, Buller, was the finest woman of her time.

BULLER.

Sleepers hear. Sometimes a single word from without, reaching the

spiritual region, changes by its touch the whole current of their

dreams.

NORTH.

I once told you that, Buller. At present I happen to be awake. But

surely a man may sit on a swing-chair with his eyes shut, and his mouth

open, without incurring the charge of somnolency. Where have you been?

SEWARD.

You told us, sir, not to disturb you till Two----

NORTH.

But where have you been?

SEWARD.

We have written our despatches--read our London Papers--and had a pull

in _Gutta Percha_ to and from Port Sonachan.

NORTH.

How does she pull?

BULLER.

Like a winner. I have written to the builder--Taylor of Newcastle--to

match her against any craft of her keel in the kingdom.

NORTH.

Sit down. Where are the Boys.

SEWARD.

Off hours ago to Kilchurn. They have just signalised--"TWO O'CLOCK. 1

SALMO FEROX, lb. 12-20 YELLOW-FINS, lb. 15-6 PIKE, lb. 36."

NORTH.

And not bad sport, either. They know the dinner hour? Seven sharp.

SEWARD.

They do--and they are not the lads to disregard orders.

NORTH.

Four finer fellows are not in Christendom.

SEWARD.

May I presume to ask, sir, what volumes these are lying open on your

knees?

NORTH.

THE ILIAD--and PARADISE LOST.