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LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE OF POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE
January, 1876.
Volume XVII, No. 97
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE CENTURY: ITS FRUITS AND ITS FESTIVAL.
I.--GENERAL PROGRESS.
UP THE THAMES
THIRD PAPER by EDWARD C. BRUCE.
LINES WRITTEN AT VENICE IN OCTOBER, 1865 by FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE.
SKETCHES OF INDIA.
I.
LADY ARTHUR EILDON'S DYING LETTER by THE AUTHOR OF "BLINDPITS."
THE HOUSE ON THE BEACH by REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.
A DEAD LOVE by F.A. HILLARD.
GENTILHOMME AND GENTLEMAN by G. COLMACHE.
SPECIAL PLEADING by SIDNEY LANIER.
THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS by MRS. E. LYNN LINTON
CHAPTER XVII. WHAT MUST COME.
CHAPTER XVIII. RECKONING WITH LEAM.
CHAPTER XIX. AT STEEL'S CORNER.
CHAPTER XX. IN HER MOTHER'S PLACE.
FAMISHING PORTUGAL.
AT THE OLD PLANTATION.
TWO PAPERS.--I. by ROBERT WILSON.
OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP. '76. by LATIENNE.
THE KREUZESSCHULE.
OBER-AMMERGAU, Bavaria, Oct. 4, 1875.
VARESE.
A STATE GOVERNOR IN THE RÔLE OF ENOCH ARDEN
THE PALATINE LIGHT.
NOTES.
LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
Books Received.
ILLUSTRATIONS
HAMPTON COURT--WEST FRONT.
HAMPTON COURT--LOOKING UP THE RIVER.
ENTRANCE TO WOLSEY'S HALL.
MIDDLE QUADRANGLE, HAMPTON COURT.
ARCHWAY IN HAMPTON COURT.
WOLSEY.
PORTICO LEADING TO GARDENS.
CENTRE AVENUE.
HAMPTON COURT--GARDEN FRONT.
GATE TO PRIVATE GARDEN.
BUSHY PARK.
GARRICK'S VILLA.
RIVER SCENE, THAMES DITTON.
WOLSEY'S TOWER, ESHER.
CLAREMONT.
CLIVE'S MONUMENT.
PRINCESS CHARLOTTE.
WALTON CHURCH.
KINGSTON CHURCH.
A DWELLING AT MAZAGON.
HINDU TEMPLE IN THE BLACK TOWN, BOMBAY.
JAIN TEMPLES AT SUNAGHUR.
THE VESTIBULE OF THE GRAND SHAÎTYA OK KARLI.
SCULPTURED FIGURES IN THE VESTIBULE OF THE GREAT SHAÎTYA OF KARLI.
[Illustration: The CENTURY: ITS FRUITS and its FESTIVAL.]
THE CENTURY: ITS FRUITS AND ITS FESTIVAL.
I.--GENERAL PROGRESS.
This of ours is a conceited century. In intense self-consciousness
it exceeds any of its late predecessors. Its activity in externally
directed thought is accompanied by an almost corresponding use of
introverted reflection. Its inheritance, and the additions it has
made, can make or will make thereto, supply an ever-present theme. It
delights to stand back from its work, like the painter from his easel,
to scan the effect of each new touch--to note what has been done and
to measure what remains. It is a great living and breathing entity,
informed with the concrete life of three generations of mankind
the most alert and the most restless of all that have existed.
This sensation of exceptional endowments is self-nourishing and
ever-growing; and our little nook of time is coming to view all the
paths of the past, broad or narrow, direct or interlacing, straight or
obscure, as so many roads laid out and graded for the one purpose of
leading straight to its gate. It sounds its own praises and celebrates
itself at all opportunities. But with all this there is a wholesome
recognition of responsibility. Nobility obliges, it is prompt to
confess, and to act accordingly. It sees flaws in its regal diamonds,
spots that still sully on its ermine; and is not slow to address
itself to the duty of their removal.
If the century understands itself, it may be said likewise to
understand the others better than they did themselves. It collects
their respective autobiographies and their mutual criticisms. The real
truths, half truths and delusions each has added to the accumulating
common stock it sifts and weighs, mercilessly piling a dustheap beyond
Mr. Boffin's wildest dreams, and rescuing, on the other hand, from
the old wastebasket many discarded scraps of real but till now
unacknowledged value. Busy in gathering stores of its own, it is able
to find time for digesting those bequeathed to it, and for executing
both tasks with a good deal of care. It brings skepticism to its aid
in both, and subjects new and old conclusions to almost equally close
analysis. Each new pebble it picks up upon the shore of the Newtonian
ocean it holds up square and askew to the light, and cross-examines
color, texture and form. Now and then, being but mortal after all, it
chuckles too hastily over a brilliant find, but the blunder is not apt
to wait long for correction. Just now it appears to be overhauling its
accounts in the item of science, taking stock of its discoveries in
that field, balancing bad against good, and determining profit and
loss. Some once-promising entries have to undergo a black mark, while
a few claims that were despaired of come to the fore. This proceeding
is only preparatory, however, to a new departure on a bolder scale.
Scientific progress knows only partial checks. Its movement is that of
a force _en échelon_: one line may get into trouble and recoil, while
the others and the general front continue to advance. Theory does not
profess to be certainty. It is only tentative, and subject necessarily
to frequent errors, for the elimination of which the severely
skeptical spirit of the laws to which it is now held furnishes the
best appliance. Modern science possesses an internal _vis
medicatrix_ which prevents its suffering seriously from excesses
or irregularities. When it ventures to touch the shield of the
Unknowable, it is only with the butt of its lance, and the inevitable
overthrow is accepted with the least modicum of humiliation.
In that science which assumes to marshal all the others, philosophic
and judicial history, ours ought to be the foremost age, if only
because it has the aid of all the others. It does more, however, than
they can be said to have contemplated. It widens the scope of history,
and more precisely formalizes its functions. It makes of the old
chroniclers so many moral statisticians, fully utilizing at the same
time their services as collectors of material facts. The deductions
thus arrived at it aims to test by the methods of the exact sciences.
It invites, in a certain degree, moral philosophy to don the trammels
of mathematics and decorate its shadowy shoulders with the substantial
yoke of the calculus. Such is the programme of a school too young as
yet to have matured its shape, but full of vigor and confidence, and
a very promising outgrowth from the elder and more stately academy
of abstract historical inquiry and generalization. The latter has
redeveloped and freshened up for us the pictures of the ancient
story-tellers, and has furthermore had them, so to speak, engraved and
scattered among the people, until we have come to live in the midst of
their times and enjoy an intimate knowledge of the actual condition
of human polity and intelligence at any given period. Through the long
gallery or the thick portfolio thus presented to our eye we may trace
the common thread of motive under the varying conditions of time and
circumstance. This thread able hands are aiding us to discover.
To what segment of time shall we assign the name of Nineteenth
Century? In A.D. 1800 there was dispute as to which was properly its
first year, the question being settled in favor of 1801. Having thus
struck out the first of the eighteen hundreds, we may take the liberty
of similarly ostracizing the last twenty-four or twenty-five, which
are yet to come, and start the nineteenth century as far back in the
eighteenth. If we look farther behind us, the centuries will be found
often to overlap in this way. Coming events cast their shadows before,
and the morning twilight of the new age is refracted deeply into the
sky of the old one. Of no case can this be more truly said than of
that in point. Not only America, but Christendom, may safely date
the century's commencement about 1775 or 1776. The narrowest isthmus
between the mains of past and present will cover those years.
England and France were then both at the outset of a new political
era, sharply divided from that preceding. The amiable and decorous
Louis XVI., with his lovely consort, had just ousted from Versailles
the Du Barrys and the Maupeons. George III., a sovereign similar in
youth and respectability of character, had a few years before in like
manner improved the tone of the English court, and, after the first
flush of welcome from his subjects, surprised and delighted to have an
Englishman and a gentleman once more upon the throne, was getting over
his early lessons in adversity from the birch of Wilkes and Junius,
and entering upon a second series from that of Washington, all
preparatory to the longest and most brilliant reign in British annals.
Frederick II. was an old man, occupied with assuring to the power he
had created the position it now holds as the first in Europe. Clive,
in the House of Lords, was nursing a still younger bantling, now
an empire twice as populous as Europe was at that period. Under the
equally rugged hand of the young princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, Russia
was having her Mongolian epidermis indued with the varnish Napoleon
so signally failed to scrape off, and was for the first time taking a
place among the great powers of the West. The curtain, in short, was
in the act of rising on the Europe of to-day. Anson had lately brought
the Pacific to light, and Cook was completing his work. The crust of
Spanish monopoly in the trade of four-fifths of the North and South
American coasts had been broken, and England was preparing to replace
it, at some points, by her own. This was, of itself, a New World,
geographical and commercial.
Under Linnæus and Buffon, another world, wider still, was unfolding
its wonders and subjecting them to a classification which has since
been but little changed, vast as have been the subsequent accessions
of knowledge and attainments in methods of interpretation. Before
them, the study of the organic creation can scarcely be said to have
existed. The inorganic was as little reduced to system, and in its
broadest aspect was not even looked at. Buffon's acute but for the
most part empiric speculations on the structure of the globe were a
step in advance; but the science of geology he did not recognize, and
left to be shaped a very little later by Hutton. Priestley, Cavendish
and Lavoisier were dissecting the impalpable air and making the
gaseous form of substances as familiar and manageable as the solid.
Hence true analytic chemistry. Astronomy, an older science, had
derived new precision from the first observed transit of Venus,
imperfect as were the data obtained and the calculations made.
Contemporaneous with this sudden apparition of new fields of
scientific discovery and enlargement of the old was an intellectual
movement of a more general character than that necessarily involved
in the progress of natural philosophy. The French Encyclopædists took
hold of social, moral and juridical questions with an unsparing vigor
that could not be gainsaid. The art of criticism was simultaneously
introduced, perfected and applied. Many of the wrongs and follies
that paralyzed thought and industry were dragged to light. Hoary
absurdities that smothered law and gospel under the foul mass of
privilege and superstition, and made them a curse instead of a
blessing, shrank before the storm of ridicule and denunciation. Those
which did not at once succumb were placed in a position of publicity
and exposure in which they could not long survive. The great upheaval
of which the French Revolution was a part was thus originated.
Sounder political ideas were brought within reach of the masses, till
then not recipient, it may almost be said, of any political ideas
at all. Statesmen and governments were similarly enlightened,
Adam Smith's declaration of commercial antedated by two years Mr.
Jefferson's of political independence. The atrocities of the English
criminal code, approaching those of Draco, were put in process of
correction, though, as usual in British reforms, it took half a
century to effect their complete removal; a woman having been, if we
recollect rightly, hanged for a trifling theft in the last years of
George IV. This same slowness of that conservative but persevering
people is calculated to blind us to the operation among them of
deep-seated and active influences. Hardly till 1815 can we discover
in England any fervor, much less efficiency, in the demand for an
extension of popular rights and relaxation of the grasp of privilege.
Irish manufactures continued to be distinctly and rigidly repelled
from competition with English by formal statute; Jewish and Catholic
disqualification was maintained; the game-laws and the rotten-borough
system, which conferred on the nobility and gentry arbitrary power
over the purse and person of the commonalty, were determinedly upheld;
counsel was only nominally allowed to the defendant in criminal cases;
chancery withheld or plundered without resistance or appeal; and there
can be no doubt that life and property were better protected by law
in France at the fall of the First Napoleon than in Great Britain.
Nevertheless, the movement had begun in the latter country forty years
before. A generation had passed since the battle of Culloden, and the
island was at length indissolubly and efficiently one. It shared fully
in the intellectual impulse of the day. Victorious in all its latest
struggles and freed from all sources of internal danger, it might
naturally have been expected to enter at once on a career of
improvement more marked than in the case of its neighbors. It is not
easy to assign reasons for failure in this respect, unless we seek
them in disgust at the subsequent dismemberment and disturbance of
the empire by the fruits of popular agitations in America, Ireland
and France. The reaction due to such causes was probably sufficient
to defeat all liberal efforts. The leading English writers of the
Revolutionary period were strong Tories. Such were Johnson, the Lake
poets after their brief swing to the opposite extreme, and Scott.
All these except the first belong as well to the time of successful
reform, and Johnson may be claimed by the eighteenth century; which
serves to illustrate the blight cast upon British literature by the
prolonged resistance of British statesmen to the prevailing current--a
resistance which took its keynote from the dying recantation and
protest of the Whig Chatham.
The opening of the epoch, then, was as marked in Great Britain as
elsewhere. Only in special fields she afterward fell behind, and lost
something like half the century. In others she kept abreast, or even
in advance.
Criticism was not content to exercise its new powers and apply its
newly-framed laws exclusively in the investigation of any branch of
philosophy. It brought them to bear upon the arts. The discovery of
the buried cities of Campania aided in attracting renewed attention to
the art-stores of Italy, ancient and modern. The principles of taste
and beauty which they illustrated were searchingly analyzed and
carefully explained. Painting and sculpture began slowly to emit their
rays through the eclipse of more than a century. The allied art shared
in this second and secondary renaissance. Haydn was in full fruit,
Mozart ripening, and Music watched, in the cradle of Beethoven, her
budding Shakespeare. A fourth Teuton was studying the symphonies of
the spheres; and within the first five years of the century, while
the "crowning mercy" of Yorktown was maturing, a planet that had never
before dawned on the eye of man took its place with the ancient six,
and "swam into the ken" of Herschel.
We have said enough to vindicate our assumed chronology and justify
our readjustment of the calendar. Europe may well be invited to
celebrate her own political, social and material centennial in 1876,
as truly as that of America. Her intellectual revival indisputably
contributed, through Franklin, Laurens, the Lees and others who were
immediately within its influence, to bring on the American movement;
and her thought, in turn, has since that juncture as certainly
gravitated, in many of its chief manifestations, toward that of the
New World. Hers is the jubilee not less than ours. The humblest cot
on her broad bosom is the brighter for '76. By no means the least
fortunate of the beneficiaries is Great Britain herself. Contrast her
present position as a government and a society with what it was when
Liberty Bell announced the dismemberment of her empire. Her rank among
the nations has notably improved. The population of England, Scotland
and Wales was then estimated below eight and a half millions--a
numerical approximation, by the way, to the three millions of the
colonies not sufficiently considered when we measure the stoutness
of her struggle against them with France and Holland combined. Of the
continental powers, the French numbered perhaps twenty-two millions,
Spain twelve, the Low Countries six, Germany thirty, Prussia seven,
and so on. From the ratio of one to nearly three, as compared with
France, she has, if we include pacified and assimilated Ireland--an
element now of strength instead of weakness--advanced to an equality.
She has equally gained on the others, except Prussia, with its
aggregation of new provinces. She may, furthermore, in the event of an
internecine conflict with a combination, count upon the unwillingness
of America to see her annihilated; not the least just of Tallyrand's
observations expressing his conviction that, though the two great
Anglo-Saxon powers might quarrel with each other, they would not push
such a dispute for the benefit of a third party. But, dismissing
the question of mere brute strength, Britain's sentiment of pride is
conciliated by the spectacle of an advance in the numbers speaking her
tongue from eleven or twelve to eighty millions within the century,
and that in considerable part at the expense of other languages;
millions of foreign immigrants, parents or children, having abandoned
their vernacular in favor of hers.
Let us now essay a light sketch of the stream at whose source we have
glanced. Light and superficial it must be, for to attempt more were
to confront the vast and many-sided theme of modern civilization.
The nineteenth century, the child of history, has the stature of
its progenitor. It would fill more libraries. Conditions, forces,
results,--all have been multiplied. But a few centuries ago the world,
as known and studied, was a corner of the Levant, with its slender and
simple apparatus of life, social, political and industrial. Later,
its boundaries were extended over the remaining shores of the same
landlocked sea. Again a step, but not an expansion, and it looked
helplessly west upon the Atlantic: its ancient domain of the East
almost forgotten. Then that long gaze was gratified, and Cathay
was seen. With that came actual expansion, which continued in both
directions of the globe's circuit until now. At length the world of
thought, of inquiry and of common interest is becoming coincident with
the sphere.
In the direction of international politics progress during the century
has not kept pace with the advance in other walks. We are accustomed
to speak of Europe as forming a republic of nations, but that cannot
be said with much more truth than it could have been in the middle
of the sixteenth century. A sense of the value to the peace of the
continent of a balance of power was then recognized; and the object
was attained in some measure as soon as the career of Charles V.,
which had inculcated the lesson, admitted at his abdication of an
application of it. Treaties were then framed, as they have been
constantly since, for this purpose, and the observation of them was
perhaps as faithful. The passions of nations, like those of men,
furnish reason with its slowest and latest conquests. The great wars
of the French Revolution, and the short and sharp ones which have,
after an indispensable breathing-spell, recently followed it, were as
causeless and as defiant of the compacts designed to prevent them as
those of the Reformation period or of the Thirty Years. They were so
many confessions that an efficient international code is one of the
inventions for which we must look to the future. It is something,
meanwhile, that, with the extinction of feudalism and the concretion
of the detached provinces with which it had macadamized Christendom,
the ceaseless fusillade of little wars, which played like a lambent
flame of mephitic gas over the surface of each country, has come to an
end. The petty sovereignties which made up Germany, France and Italy
have been within a few generations absorbed into three masses--so many
police districts which have proved tolerably effective in keeping
the peace within the large territories they cover. The nations, thus
massing themselves for exterior defence, and maintaining a healthy
system of graduated and distributed powers, original or conferred,
for the support of domestic order and activity, have cultivated
successfully the field of home politics.
In that the change for the better is certainly vast. It is difficult
for Americans, whose acquaintance with European history is usually
derived from compends, to realize what an incubus of complicated
and conflicting privileges, restrictions and forms has, within the
century, been lifted from the energies of the Old World. The sweeping
reforms in French law are but a small part of what has been done. All
the neighbors of France, from Derry to the Dardanelles, have shared
in the blessing. We may be assisted to an idea of it by turning to the
experience of our own country, whose condition in this regard was
so exceptionally good at the beginning of the period in point. The
constitutions of our States have been repeatedly altered, and they are
now very different in their details from the old colonial charters,
liberal and elastic as these for the most part were. Yet American
innovations are but child's play to those of Europe, which has not
reached the position we held at the beginning, and has a great
deal still to do. In France the people are not trained to local
self-government, but they have an excellent police, and the rights
of person and property are well protected. In Italy, which has only
within a few years ceased to be a mere geographical expression,
municipal rights and the independence of the commune are on a
stronger basis, but the police is bad, though far better than when
the Peninsula was divided among half a dozen powers. Both have but
commenced arming themselves with the chief safeguard of Germany,
popular education. The great fact with them all is, that, despite the
drawbacks of external pressure and large standing armies, they are
at liberty to pursue the path of domestic reform as far as they have
light enough to perceive it or purpose enough to require it.
All this is an immense gain. It reflects itself in the improved social
condition of the people--a result, of course, not wholly due to it.
Crime, though the newspapers make us familiar with more of it than
formerly, has notably diminished. The savage classes of the great
capitals, populous as some of the old kingdoms, are controlled like
a menagerie by its keepers. A residuum of the untamable will always
exist, inaccessible to education or "moral suasion," and amenable only
to force. This force seems sufficiently supplied by the baton of the
constable, and we may hope that even in volcanic Paris an eruption
of barricades will henceforth cease, unless simply as a somewhat
flamboyant expression of political sentiment, the gamin throwing up
paving-stones and omnibuses as the independent British voter throws
up his hat at the hustings. But it will not do to expect too much from
any ameliorating cause or chain of causes. Race-characteristics cannot
be annihilated. Man is an animal, and the Parisian turbulent. The
Commune has done its worst probably, and the Internationale, which
threatened at one time to loom up as a modern Vehmgericht, has
subsided. Whatever may hereafter come of such slumbering perils, the
beneficent forces which so largely repress and reduce them are none
the less real.
The marked advance of the masses in physical well-being is a
great--some would say the greatest--item in social profit and loss.
Food is everywhere better in quality and more regular in supply. The
English record of the corn-market for six centuries shows a remarkable
alteration in favor of steadiness in price. The uncertainties of
the seasons are discounted or neutralized by the average struck
by increased variety of products and multiplied sources of supply.
Famines become infrequent. That of 1847 in Ireland, bad as it was,
would have been worse a hundred years earlier. A given population is
more regularly and better fed than one-fifth of its number would at
that time have been. A city of four millions would then have been an
impossibility. Dress and lodging are better, and relatively cheaper.
Hygiene is more understood, imperfect as is its application. Some
diseases due to its disregard have disappeared or been localized. As a
result, men have gained in weight and size and in length of life.
In the character of their recreations--a thing largely governed by
national idiosyncrasy--the masses have advanced. And this we may say
without losing sight of the devastations of intemperance since the
distillation of grain was introduced, about a century and a half ago.
With an enhanced demand upon man's faculties civilization brings an
increased use of stimulants. There are many of these unknown to former
generations. In noting those which attack the health by storm we are
apt to overlook others which proceed more stealthily by sap. Of these
are coffee, tea, chocolate, the rich spices and more substantial
accessions to the modern table, all stimulating and inviting to
excess, but all, as truly, nutritious and apt to take the place of
other aliment, thus adapting the measure of their use, as a rule,
to the demands of the system. The consumption of opium, the one
dissipation of the Chinese till now unadded to the three or four of
the Caucasian, is said to be extending. If so, a _Counter-blast_ to it
from king or commonwealth will be as ineffectual as against its allied
narcotic. Prohibitory laws will be even more unavailing than in
the case of ardent spirits. It will run its course--a short one,
we trust--and be followed or joined by new drugs contributed by
conscienceless trade.
Intemperance--we use the word in its special but most common
signification--is debasing. Compensation, so far as it goes, is found
in the abandonment by those communities among whom it is most rife of
certain gross amusements, such as cock-fighting and the prize-ring.
Bull-and bear-baiting, too, so prominent among the _deliciæ_ of
England's maiden queen, have died out. Isolated Spain, fenced off by
the Pyrenees from the breeze of benevolence wafted from the virtuous
and bibulous North, still utilizes the Manchegan or Estremaduran bull
as a means of conferring "happy despatch" on her superannuated horses
and absorbing the surplus belligerence of her "roughs." She seems,
however, disposed to tire of this feast of equine and taurine blood,
and the last relic of the arena will before many years follow its
cognate brutalities. For obvious reasons, bull-fighting can be the
sport, habitually, of but an infinitesimal fraction of the people.
They share with the other races of the Continent the simple pleasures
of dance and song. These enjoyments, as we go north and are driven
within doors from the pure and temperate air by a more unfriendly
climate, form an increasingly intimate alliance with strong drink,
until in the so-called gardens of Germany Calliope and Gambrinus are
inseparable friends. Farther still toward the Pole the voice of the
Muse gradually dies away upon the sodden atmosphere; and she, having
outlasted her successive Southern associates, wine and beer, in turn
gives place to brandy pure and simple--a beverage itself frost-proof
and only suited to frost-proof men.
The long nights and indoor days of the North are favorable to another
and more desirable trait of modern social progress--education. The
potency of such a meteorological cause in making popular a taste for
knowledge the instances of Iceland, Scotland, Scandinavia and North
Germany, to say nothing of New England, leave us no room to doubt.
It is, of course, not the only cause. Ability to read and write is as
universal in China and Japan, as in the countries we have named. In
the case of the Orientals it cannot be ascribed, either, wholly to
that conviction of the importance, as a conservative guarantee,
of elevating the popular mind and taste, which belongs to the
enlightenment of the day. Instinctive recognition of this need
manifests itself in a simultaneous move in the direction of universal
education at government expense throughout the two continents. All
the populations snatch up their satchels and hurry to school. Athens
revives the Academe and reinstates the Olympic games under a literary
avatar. Italy follows suit. Hornbooks open and shut with a suggestive
snap under the pope's nose, and Young Rome calculates its future with
slate and pencil. Gaul, fresh from one year's term in the severest of
all schools, adversity, joins the procession, close by John Bull, who,
_more suo_, pauses first to decide whether the youthful mind shall
take its pap with the spoon of orthodoxy or heterodoxy, or neither.
With him the question between Church schools and national schools
is complicated by one which is common to other nations--whether
attendance shall be compulsory or voluntary only. The tendency is
toward the former, which has long been in practice in some of the
States of the Union; and it seems not unlikely that Christendom will,
before many years, revert, in this important matter, to the Spartan
view that children are the property of the state.
Lavish beyond precedent are the provisions made by governments and
individuals everywhere for the promotion of this great object. Private
endowment of schools and colleges was never before so frequent and
liberal, and nothing so quickly disarms the caution of the average
taxpayer as an appeal for common schools. From California eastward to
Japan it is honored along the whole line, the unanimous "Yea" being
the most eloquent and hopeful word the modern world emits. Of the
slumbering power that till recently lay hidden in coal and water, and
which has so incalculably multiplied the material strength of man,
much has been said; but we fail to appreciate the unevoked fund
of intellect upon which he has additionally to draw. The highest
expectation of results to be witnessed and enjoyed by the approaching
generations involves no postulate of human perfectibility, It finds
ample warrant in what has been accomplished under our eyes. A century
ago only Scotland and two or three of the American colonies could
be said to possess a system of common schools. From those feeble and
smouldering sparks what a flame has spread! The space it has covered
and the fructifying light and warmth it has produced may in some
measure be gauged by the newspaper press and the vast bulk of
popularized information in book-form created since then. This shows
the increase in the numerical ratio of readers to the aggregate of
population.
A difficulty exists in the provision of officers for this great
army of pupils. They cannot always be raised from the ranks. The
thoroughness of a teacher's knowledge is not acquired by the requisite
proportion. Normal schools demand more and more attention. But here we
arrive at a field of detail that would lead us far beyond the limit
of these articles. We pass naturally from the subject of education
to what is, in the narrower but most generally accepted sense of the
word--mental training--- its leading object of pursuit.
If, in the broader and truer meaning of education--that which assumes
the impalpable part of man to be something more than a sponge for
facts--- the slender phalanx of _the men who know_ will ever
remain, proportionally, a small band, it is at least certain that in
acquaintance with natural phenomena and their relations the masses
of the nineteenth century stand out from their forefathers as eminent
philosophers. Our age may be almost said to have created rather than
extended science, so mighty is the bulk of what it has added by the
side of what it found.
In mathematics, the branch which most nearly approaches pure reason,
least advance has been made. There was least room for it. Newton,
when, at quite a mature period of his career, Euclid was first brought
to his attention, laid the book down after a cursory glance with
the remark that it was only fit for children, its propositions being
self-evident. Yet to those truisms Newton added very little. His work
lay in their development and application. Laplace and Biot belong to
our own day; but their task, too, consisted in the employment of old
rules. The most effective tools of the mathematician are framed from
the Arab algebra and Napier's logarithms. The science itself without
application is, like logic, a soul without a body.
The field most fruitful under its application is that of astronomy.
Here, progress has been great. A measuring-rod has been provided for
the depths of space by the ascertainment of the sun's distance within
a three-hundredth part of that body's diameter. The existence of
a cosmic ether, a resisting medium, has been established, and its
retarding influence calculated. Many of the nebulae have been reduced,
and others proved to be in a gaseous condition, like comets. The
latter bodies have been chained down to regular orbits, followed
far beyond those of the old planets, and brought into genealogical
relations with these through the links of bolides and asteroids. The
family circle of planets proper has been immensely increased, a new
visitant to the central fire appearing every few years or even months.
Newton connected the most distant points of the universe by the one
principle of gravitation: the spectroscope unites them by identity
of structure and composition. Improved instruments have detected the
parallax of a number of the fixed stars, and traced motion in both
solar and stellar systems as units. Coming homeward from the distant
heavens, the advances of astronomy diminish as we near what may be
called the old planets and our pale companion the moon. The existence
of a lunar atmosphere and the habitability of Mars are still debated;
with, we believe, the odds against both. But the star-gazers make
their craft useful in a novel way when it reaches the earth. Upon
the precession of the equinoxes they erect a fabric of retrograde
chronology, and set a clock to geologic time. Here Sir Isaac is
brought to grief. His excursions beyond the Deluge are proved blind
guides. He misleads us among the ages as sadly as Archbishop Usher.
The profoundest of laymen and the most learned of clerics are equally
at sea in locating creation. That successive phases of animate
existence were rising and fading with the oscillations of the earth's
inclination to its orbit never occurred to him to whom "all was
light." To probe the stars was to him a simpler process than to
anatomize the globe upon which he stood.
This is the less remarkable when we reflect what a hard fight geology
has had. A generation after Newton's death fossils were referred
for their origin to a certain "plastic power" in Nature--mere idle
whittlings of bone that had never known an outfit of flesh and
blood. Then came a long and motley procession of cosmogonies, every
speculator, from John Wesley down to Pye Smith, insisting warmly
on what seemed good in his own eyes. The last stand was made on the
antiquity of man, and it is only a dozen years since the ablest of
British--perhaps since Cuvier of modern--geologists, Sir Charles
Lyell, yielded to the preponderance of evidence, and confessed that
the era of man's appearance on earth had been made too recent. A few
determined skirmishers still linger behind the line of retreat, like
Ney at the bridge of Kowno, and fire some fruitless shots at the
advancing enemy. This is well. Tribulation and opposition are good
for any creed, scientific or other. It weeds out the weak ones and
strengthens those that are to stand.
The mapping out of extinct faunas and floras and assigning pedigree
to existing species are by no means the whole province of geologists.
Productive industry owes to them a vast saving of time and cost in
searching for useful minerals. They distinguish the same strata in
widely separated districts by means of the characteristic fossils,
and are thus enabled to guide the miner. A geological survey of its
territory is one of the first cares of an enlightened government, and
a geologist is the one scientific official the leading States of the
Union agree in maintaining. The science has moved forward steadily
from its original office of studying buried deposits and classifying
extinct organisms, until the hard and fast line between fossil and
recent has disappeared, the continuous action of ordinary causes in
past and present been established, and an unbroken domain assigned
to the laws of the visible creation. Deep-sea soundings have extended
inquiry, slight enough as yet, to that immensely preponderant portion
of the globe's crust that is covered by water. Penetrating the ocean
is like penetrating the rocks, inasmuch as it introduces us to some of
the same primal forms of life; but it presents them in an active and
sentient state. Neptune's ravished secrets vindicate the Neptunists,
while Pluto is relegated to the abode assigned him by classic myths,
where he and his comrade, Vulcan, keep their furnaces alight and
project their slag and smoke through many a roaring chimney.
Upon (as beneath) the deep, science is erecting for itself new homes.
It tracks the wandering wind, and moves at ease, calmly as a surveyor
with chain and compass, through the eddies of the cyclone. It maps for
the sailor the currents, aerial and subaqueous, of each spot on the
unmarked main, and sends him warning far ahead of the tempest. It
divides with the thermometer the mass of brine into horizontal zones,
and assigns to each its special population.
A hundred years ago, only the surface of the land was studied, and but
a small part of that. All beneath its surface was a mystery, and the
lore of the sea was untouched. Now, knowledge has penetrated to the
central fire, and of the sea it can be no longer said that man's
"control stops with its shores." The pathway of his messenger from
continent to continent he has laid deep in its chalky ooze, while over
it silt silently, flake by flake, as they have been falling since æons
before his creation, the induviæ of the earliest creatures.
And this his messenger at the bottom of the sea is back in its old
home. First hidden in the electron cast up by the waves of the Baltic,
it was left there, uncomprehended and barren, till our century. During
all that time it was calling from the clouds to man's dazzled eye and
deafened ear. It pervaded the air he breathed, the ground he trod and
the frame which constituted him. It bore his will from brain to hand,
and guarded his life, through the (so-called) spontaneously acting
muscles of the thorax, during the half or third of his life during
which his will slumbered. At length its call was hearkened to
intelligently. Franklin made it articulate. Its twin Champollions came
in Volta and Galvani. Its few first translated words have, under a
host of elucidators, swelled to volumes. They link into one language
the dialects of light, motion and heat. The indurated turpentine of
the Pomeranian beach speaks the tongue of the farthest star.
The sciences, like the nations and like bees, as they grow too large
for their hive are perpetually swarming and colonizing. Not that
colonization is followed, as in the case of the similitude, by
independence. Their mutual bonds become closer and closer. But
convenience and (so to speak) comfort require the nominal separation.
So electricity sets up for itself; and chemistry, the metropolis,
swells into other offshoots. So numerous and so great are these that
the old alchemists, unlimited range through the material, immaterial
and supernatural as they claimed for their art, would rub their eyes,
bleared over blowpipe and alembic, at sight of its present riches. The
half-hewn block handed down by these worthies--not by any means
Like that great Dawn which baffled Angelo
Left shapeless, grander for its mystery,
but blurred and scratched all over with childish and unmeaning
scrawls--has been wholly transformed. Chemistry no longer assumes to
read our future, but it does a great deal to brighten our present.
Laboring to supply the wants and enhance the pleasures and security
of daily life, it makes excursions with a sure foot in the opposite
direction of abstruse problems in natural philosophy. It analyzes all
substances, determines their relations, and tries to guide the artisan
in utilizing its acquisitions for the general good. To enumerate
these, or to give the merest sketch of chemical progress within the
century, would fill many pages. It has enriched and invigorated all
the arts by supplying new material and new processes. Illuminating
gas, photography, the anæsthetics, the artificial fertilizers,
quinine, etc. are a few of its more familiarly known contributions.
It has aided medical jurisprudence, and so far checked crime. Besides
enlarging the pharmacopoeia, it has promoted sanitary reform in many
ways, notably by ascertaining the media of contagion in disease and
providing for their detection and removal. Its triumphs are so closely
interwoven with the appliances of common life that we are prone to
lose sight of them. From the aniline dye that beautifies a picture or
a dress, to the explosive that lifts a reef or mines the Alps for a
highway, the gradations are infinite and multiform.
Heavy as is the draft of the material sciences upon the thought
and energy of the century, it has not monopolized them. No trifling
resources have been left for mere abstract investigation. If
meta-physics stands, despite the labors of Stewart, Hamilton, Hegel,
Comte, very much where it did when Socrates ran amuck among the
casuistical Quixotes of his day, and left the philosophic tilters of
Greece, the knights-errant in search of the supreme good, in the same
plight with the chivalry of Spain after Cervantes, the science of
mind, and particularly mental pathology, has made some steps forward
on crutches furnished by the medical profession. The treatment of
insanity is on a more rational and efficient footing. The statistician
collects, and invites the moral philosopher to collate, the records of
crime. The naturalist studies the life of the lower animals, and gives
the _coup de grace_ to the uncompromising distinction drawn by human
conceit between instinct and intelligence.
In the walks of comparative philology much has been accomplished.
Sanskrit has been exhumed. Aryan and Semitic roots are traced back
to an almost synchronous antiquity. The decipherment of the Egyptian
inscriptions seems to bring us into communication with a still more
remote form of language. More recent periods derive new light from the
Etruscan tombs and the Assyrian bricks. Linguists deem themselves in
sight of something better than the "bow-wow" theory, and are no longer
content to let the calf, the lamb and the child bleat in one and the
same vocabulary of labials, and with no other rudiments than "ma" and
"pa" "speed the soft intercourse from pole to pole." As yet, that part
of mankind which knows not its right hand from its left is the only
one possessed of a worldwide lingo. The flux that is to weld all
tongues into one, and produce a common language like a common unit of
weight, measure and coinage, remains to be discovered. A Chinese pig,
transplanted to an Anglo-Saxon stye, has no difficulty in instituting
immediate converse with his new friend, but the gentleman who travels
in Europe needs to carry an assortment of dialects for use on opposite
sides of the same rivulet or the same hill. However, as the French
franc has been adopted by four other nations, and the French litre and
mètre by a greater number, one and the same mail and postage made to
serve Europe and America, and passports been abolished, we may venture
to picture to ourselves the time when the German shall consent to
clear his throat, the Frenchman his nose, the Spaniard his tonsils and
the Englishman the tip of his tongue--when all shall become as little
children and be mutually comprehensible. Commerce at present is
doing more than the philosophers to that end. While the countrymen
of Wilhelm von Humboldt and Max Müller persist in burying their
laboriously heaped treasures under a load of black-letter type and
words and sentences the most fearfully and wonderfully made, the
skipper scatters English words with English calico and American clocks
among all the isles. A picturesque fringe of pigeon English decorates
the coasts of Africa, Asia and Oceanica. It might be deeper, and
doubtless will be, for our mother-tongue will very certainly be
supreme in the world of trade for at least a couple of centuries to
come. If we were only half as sure of its being adopted by France as
by Fiji!
If almighty steam and sail must remain unequal to this task, wondrous
indeed are their other potencies. They have contracted the globe like
a dried apple, only in a far greater degree. In 1776 three years
was the usual allotment of the grand tour. Beginning at London, it
extended to Naples and occasionally Madrid. It often left out Vienna,
and more frequently Berlin. In the same period you may now put a
girdle round the earth ninefold thick. You may, given the means
and the faculties, set up business establishments at San Francisco,
Yokohama, Shanghai, Canton, Calcutta, Bombay, Alexandria, Rome, Paris,
London and New York, and visit each once a quarter. The goods to
supply them may travel, however bulky, on the same ship and nearly the
same train in point of speed with yourself. Nowhere farther than a few
weeks from home in person, nowhere are you more remote verbally than a
few hours. The Red Sea opens to your footsteps, as it did to those of
Moses; and the lightning that bears your words cleaves the pathway of
Alexander and the New World for which he wept.
It is really hard to mention these innovations on the old ways, so
vast and so sudden, without degenerating into rhetoric or bombast. The
spread-eagle style comes naturally to an epoch that soars on quick
new wing above all the others. We have it in all shapes--- equally
startling and true in figures of arithmetic or figures of speech. Any
school-boy can tell you, if you give him the dimensions of the Great
Pyramid and state thirty-three thousand pounds one foot high in a
minute as the conventional horse-power, how many hours it would take a
pony-team picked out of the hundreds of thousands of steam-engines on
the two continents to raise it. He will reduce to the same prosaic but
eloquent form a number of like problems illustrative of the command
obtained over some of the forces of Nature, and their employment
in multiplying and economizing manual strength and dexterity and
stimulating ingenuity. When we come to contemplate the whole edifice
of modern production, it seems to simplify itself into one new motor
applied to the old mechanical powers, which may perhaps in turn be
condensed into one--the inclined plane. This helps to the impression
that the structure is not only sure to be enlarged, as we see it
enlarging day by day, but to grow into novel and more striking
aspects. Additional motors will probably be discovered, or some we
already possess in embryo may be developed into greater availability.
These, operating on an ever-growing stock of material, will convince
our era that it is but introductory to a more magnificent and not far
distant future.
Magnificent the century is justified in styling its work. What matter
could do for mind and steam for the hand it has done. But is there
any gain in the eye and intellect which perceive, and the hand which
fixes, beauty and truth? Is there any addition to the simple lines, as
few and rudimental as the mechanical powers, which embody proportion
and harmony, or in the fibres of emotion, as scant but as infinite in
their range of tone as the strings of the primeval harp, which ask and
respond to no motor but the touch of genius? Have we surpassed the old
song, the old story, the old picture, the old temple?
Such questions must be answered in the negative. The age, recognizing
perforce the inherent capabilities of the race as a constant quantity,
contents itself so far with endeavoring to adapt and reproduce, or at
most imitate, such manifestations of the artistic sense as it finds
excellent in the past. The day for originality may come ere long,
and nothing can be lost in striving for it, but a capacity for the
beautiful at first hand cannot come without an appreciation of it at
second hand. With the number of cultivated minds so vastly increased
as compared with any previous period, the greater variety of objects
and conditions presented to them, the multiplicity of races to
which they belong, and consequently of distinct race-characteristics
imbedded in them and brought into play, and the impulse communicated
by greater general activity, the expectation is allowably sanguine
that the nineteenth century will plant an art as well as an industry
of its own. Wealth, culture and peace seldom fail to win this final
crown. They are busily gathering together the jewels of the past,
endless in diversity of charm. Museum, gallery, library swell as never
before. The earth is not mined for iron and coal alone. Statue, vase
and gem are disentombed. Pictures are rescued from the grime of years
and neglect. All are copied by sun or hand, and sent in more or less
elaboration into hall or cottage. In literature our possessions
could scarce be more complete, and they are even more universally
distributed. The nations compete with each other in adding to this
equipment for a new revival, which seems, on the surface, to have more
in its favor than had that of the cinque-cento.
UP THE THAMES
THIRD PAPER.
[Illustration: HAMPTON COURT--WEST FRONT.]
Today our movement shall be up the Thames by rail, starting on the
south side of the river to reach an objective point on the north bank.
So crooked is the stream, and so much more crooked are the different
systems of railways, with their competing branches crossing each other
and making the most audacious inroads on each other's territory, that
the direction in which we are traveling at any given moment, or the
station from which we start, is a very poor index to the quarter for
which we are bound. The railways, to say nothing of the river, that
wanders at its own sweet will, as water commonly does in a country
offering it no obstructions, are quite defiant of their geographical
names. The Great Western runs north, west and south-east; the
South-western strikes south, south-east and north-west; while
the Chatham and Dover distributes itself over most of the region
south-east of London, closing its circuit by a line along the coast
of the Channel that completes a triangle. We can go almost anywhere
by any road. It is necessary, however, in this as in other mundane
proceedings, to make a selection. We must have a will before we find
a way. Let our way, then, be to Waterloo Station on the Southwestern
rail.
[Illustration: HAMPTON COURT--LOOKING UP THE RIVER.]
Half an hour's run lands us at Hampton Court, with a number of
fellow-passengers to keep us company if we want them, and in fact
whether we want them or not. Those who travel into or out of a city of
four millions must lay their account with being ever in a crowd.
Our consolation is, that in the city the crowd is so constant and so
wholly strange to us as to defeat its effect, and create the feeling
of solitude we have so often been told of; while outside of it, at the
parks and show-places, the amplitude of space, density and variety of
plantations, and multiplicity of carefully designed turns, nooks and
retreats, are such that retirement of a more genuine character is
within easy reach. The crowd, we know, is about us, but it does
not elbow us, and we need hardly see it. The current of humanity,
springing from one or a dozen trains or steamboats, dribbles away,
soon after leaving its parent source, into a multitude of little
divergent channels, like irrigating water, and covers the surface
without interference.
It would be a curious statistical inquiry how many visitors Hampton
Court has lost since the Cartoons were removed in 1865 to the
South Kensington Museum. Actually, of course, the whole number has
increased, is increasing, and is not going to be diminished. The
query is, How many more there would be now were those eminent bits of
pasteboard--slit up for the guidance of piece-work at a Flemish loom,
tossed after the weavers had done with them into a lumber-room, then
after a century's neglect disinterred by the taste of Rubens and
Charles I., brought to England, their poor frayed and faded fragments
glued together and made the chief decoration of a royal palace--still
in the place assigned them by the munificence and judgment of Charles?
For our part--and we may speak for most Americans--when we heard,
thought or read of Hampton Court, we thought of the Cartoons.
Engravings of them were plenty--much more so than of the palace
itself. Numbers of domestic connoisseurs know Raphael principally as
the painter of the Cartoons.
A few who have not heard of them have heard of Wolsey. The pursy
old cardinal furnishes the surviving one of the two main props of
Hampton's glory. An oddly-assorted pair, indeed--the delicate Italian
painter, without a thought outside of his art, and the bluff English
placeman, avid of nothing but honors and wealth. And the association
of either of them with the spot is comparatively so slight. Wolsey
held the ground for a few years, only by lease, built a mere fraction
of the present edifice, and disappeared from the scene within half a
generation. What it boasts, or boasted, of the other belongs to
the least noted of his works--half a dozen sketches meant for
stuff-patterns, and never intended to be preserved as pictures.
Pictures they are, nevertheless, and all the more valuable and
surprising as manifesting such easy command of hand and faculty, such
a matter-of-course employment of the utmost resources of art on
a production designed to have no continuing existence except as
finished, rendered and given to the world by a "base mechanical," with
no sense of art at all.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO WOLSEY'S HALL.]
Royalty, and the great generally, availed themselves of their
opportunities to select the finest locations and stake out the best
claims along these shores. Of elevation there is small choice, a level
surface prevailing. What there is has been generally availed of for
park or palace, with manifest advantage to the landscape. The curves
of the river are similarly utilized. Kew and Hampton occupy peninsulas
so formed. The latter, with Bushy Park, an appendage, fills a
water-washed triangle of some two miles on each side. The southern
angle is opposite Thames Ditton, a noted resort for brethren of the
angle, with an ancient inn as popular, though not as stylish and
costly, as the Star and Garter at Richmond. The town and palace of
Hampton lie about halfway up the western side of the demesne. The
view up and down the river from Hampton Bridge is one of the crack
spectacles of the neighborhood. Satisfied with it, we pass through the
principal street, with the Green in view to our left and Bushy Park
beyond it, to the main entrance. This is part of the original palace
as built by the cardinal. It leads into the first court. This, with
the second or Middle Quadrangle, may all be ascribed to him, with some
changes made by Henry VIII. and Christopher Wren. The colonnade of
coupled Ionic pillars which runs across it on the south or right-hand
side as you enter was designed by Wren. It is out of keeping with its
Gothic surroundings. Standing beneath it, you see on the opposite side
of the square Wolsey's Hall. It looks like a church. The towers on
either side of the gateway between the courts bear some relics of the
old faith in the shape of terra-cotta medallions, portraits of the
Roman emperors. These decorations were a present to the cardinal
from Leo X. The oriel windows by their side bear contributions in
a different taste from Henry VIII. They are the escutcheons of
that monarch. The two popes, English and Italian, are well met.
Our engravings give a good idea of the style of these parts of the
edifice. The first or outer square is somewhat larger than the middle
one, which is a hundred and thirty-three feet across from north to
south, and ninety-one in the opposite direction, or in a line with the
longest side of the whole palace.
A stairway beneath the arch leads to the great hall, one hundred
and six feet by forty. This having been well furbished recently, its
aspect is probably little inferior in splendor to that which it wore
in its first days. The open-timber roof, gay banners, stained windows
and groups of armor bring mediaeval magnificence very freshly before
us. The ciphers and arms of Henry and his wife, Jane Seymour, are
emblazoned on one of the windows, indicating the date of 1536 or 1537.
Below them were graciously left Wolsey's imprint--his arms, with a
cardinal's hat on each side, and the inscription, "The Lord Thomas
Wolsey, Cardinal legat de Latere, archbishop of Yorke and chancellor
of Englande." The tapestry of the hall illustrates sundry passages in
the life of Abraham. A Flemish pupil of Raphael is credited with their
execution or design.
This hall witnessed, certainly in the reign of George I., and
according to tradition in that of Elizabeth, the mimic reproduction
of the great drama with which it is associated. It is even said that
Shakespeare took part here in his own play, _King Henry VIII., or the
Fall of Wolsey_. In 1558 the hall was resplendent with one thousand
lamps, Philip and Mary holding their Christmas feast. The princess
Elizabeth was a guest. The next morning she was compliant or politic
enough to hear matins in the queen's closet.
The Withdrawing Room opens from the hall. It is remarkable for its
carved and illuminated ceiling of oak. Over the chimney is a portrait
of Wolsey in profile on wood, not the least interesting of a long list
of pictures which are a leading attraction of the place. These are
assembled, with few exceptions, in the third quadrangle, built in
1690. Into this we next pass. It takes the place of three of the
five original courts, said to have been fully equal to the two which
remain.
[Illustration: MIDDLE QUADRANGLE, HAMPTON COURT.]
The modern or Eastern Quadrangle is a hundred and ten by a hundred and
seventeen feet. It is encircled by a colonnade like that in the middle
square, and has nothing remarkable, architecturally, about it. In the
public rooms that surround us there are, according to the catalogue,
over a thousand pictures. Leonardo da Vinci, Paul Veronese, Titian,
Giulio Romano, Murillo and a host of lesser names of the Italian and
Spanish schools, with still more of the Flemish, are represented. To
most visitors, who may see elsewhere finer works by these masters, the
chief attraction of the walls is the series of original portraits by
Holbein, Vandyck, Lely and Kneller. The two full-lengths of Charles I.
by Vandyck, on foot and on horseback, both widely known by engravings,
are the gems of this department, as a Vandyck will always be of any
group of portraits.
[Illustration: ARCHWAY IN HAMPTON COURT.]
Days may be profitably and delightfully spent in studying this fine
collection. The first men and women of England for three centuries
handed down to us by the first artists she could command form a
spectacle in which Americans can take a sort of home interest. Nearly
all date before 1776, and we have a rightful share in them. Each
head and each picture is a study. We have art and history together.
Familiar as we may be with the events with which the persons
represented are associated, it is impossible to gaze upon their
lineaments, set in the accessories of their day by the ablest hands
guided by eyes that saw below the surface, and not feel that we have
new readings of British annals.
[Illustration: WOLSEY.]
Among the most ancient heads is a medallion of Henry VII. by
Torregiano, the peppery and gifted Florentine who executed the
marvelous chapel in Westminster Abbey and broke the nose of Michael
Angelo. English art--or rather art in England--may be said to date
from him. He could not create a school of artists in the island--the
material did not exist--but the few productions he left there stood
out so sharply from anything around them that the possessors of the
wealth that was then beginning to accumulate employed it in drawing
from the Continent additional treasures from the newly-found world
of beauty. The riches of England have grown apace, and her collectors
have used them liberally, if not always wisely, until her galleries,
in time, have come to be sought by the connoisseurs, and even the
artists, of the Continent.
[Illustration: PORTICO LEADING TO GARDENS.]
The last picture-gallery we traverse is the only one at Hampton Court
specially built for its purpose; and it is empty. This is the room
erected by Sir Christopher Wren for the reception of the Cartoons.
It leads us to the corridor that opens on the garden-front. We leave
behind us, in addition to the state apartments, a great many others
which are peopled by other inhabitants than the big spiders, said to
be found nowhere else, known as cardinals. The old palace is not kept
wholly for show, but is made useful in the political economy of
the kingdom by furnishing a retreat to impecunious members of the
oligarchy. Certain families of distressed aristocrats are harbored
here--clearly a more wholesome arrangement than letting them take
their chance in the world and bring discredit on their class.
[Illustration: CENTRE AVENUE.]
Emerging on the great gardens, forty four acres in extent, we find
ourselves on broad walks laid out with mathematical regularity, and
edged by noble masses of yew, holly, horse-chestnut, etc. almost as
rectangular and circular. We are here struck with the great advantage
derived in landscape gardening from the rich variety of large
evergreens possible in the climate of Britain. The holly, unknown as
an outdoor plant in this country north of Philadelphia, is at home in
the north of Scotland, eighteen degrees nearer the pole. We are more
fortunate with the Conifers, many of the finest of which family are
perfectly hardy here. But we miss the deodar cedar, the redwood and
Washingtonia of California, and the cedar of Lebanon. These, unless
perhaps the last, cannot be depended on much north of the latitude of
the _Magnolia grandiflora._ They thrive all over England, with others
almost as beautiful, and as delicate north of the Delaware. Of the
laurel tribe, also hardy in England, our Northern States have but a
few weakly representatives. So with the Rhododendra.
[Illustration: HAMPTON COURT--GARDEN FRONT.]
When, tired of even so charming a scene of arboreal luxury, we knock
at the Flower-Pot gate to the left of the palace, and are admitted
into the private garden, we make the acquaintance of another stately
stranger we have had the honor at home of meeting only under glass.
This is the great vine, ninety years or a hundred old, of the Black
Hamburg variety. It does not cover as much space as the Carolina
Scuppernong--the native variety that so surprised and delighted
Raleigh's Roanoke Island settlers in 1585--often does. But its
bunches, sometimes two or three thousand in number, are much larger
than the Scuppernong's little clumps of two or three. They weigh
something like a pound each, and are thought worthy of being reserved
for Victoria's dessert. Her own family vine has burgeoned so broadly
that three thousand pounds of grapes would not be a particularly large
dish for a Christmas dinner for the united Guelphs.
[Illustration: GATE TO PRIVATE GARDEN.]
We must not forget the Labyrinth, "a mighty maze, but not without a
plan," that has bewildered generations of young and old children since
the time of its creator, William of Orange. It is a feature of the
Dutch style of landscape gardening imprinted by him upon the Hampton
grounds. He failed to impress a like stamp upon that chaos of queer,
shapeless and contradictory means to beneficent ends, the British
constitution.
Hampton Court, notwithstanding the naming of the third quadrangle the
Fountain Court, and the prominence given to a fountain in the design
of the principal grounds, is not rich in waterworks. Nature has done a
good deal for it in that way, the Thames embracing it on two sides
and the lowness of the flat site placing water within easy reach
everywhere. This superabundance of the element did not content the
magnificent Wolsey. He was a man of great ideas, and to secure a head
for his jets he sought an elevated spring at Combe Wood, more than two
miles distant. To bring this supply he laid altogether not less than
eight miles of leaden pipe weighing twenty-four pounds to the foot,
and passing under the bed of the Thames. Reduced to our currency
of to-day, these conduits must have cost nearly half a million of
dollars. They do their work yet, the gnawing tooth of old _Edax rerum_
not having penetrated far below the surface of the earth. Better
hydraulic results would now be attained at a considerably reduced cost
by a steam-engine and stand-pipe. At the beginning of the sixteenth
century this motor was not even in embryo, unless we accept the story
of Blasco de Garay's steamer that manoeuvred under the eye of Charles
V. as fruitlessly as Fitch's and Fulton's before Napoleon. Coal, its
dusky pabulum, was also practically a stranger on the upper Thames.
The ancient fire-dogs that were wont to bear blazing billets hold
their places in the older part of the palace.
[Illustration: BUSHY PARK.]
Crossing the Kingston road, which runs across the peninsula and skirts
the northern boundary of Hampton Park, we get into its continuation,
Bushy Park. This is larger than the chief enclosure, but less
pretentious. We cease to be oppressed by the palace and its excess of
the artificial. The great avenues of horse-chestnut, five in number,
and running parallel with a length of rather more than a mile and an
aggregate breadth of nearly two hundred yards, are formal enough in
design, but the mass of foliage gives them the effect of a wood. They
lead nowhere in particular, and are flanked by glades and copses in
which the genuinely rural prevails. Cottages gleam through the trees.
The lowing of kine, the tinkling of the sheep-bell, the gabble
of poultry, lead you away from thoughts of prince and city. Deer
domesticated here since long before the introduction of the turkey
or the guinea-hen bear themselves with as quiet ease and freedom
from fear as though they were the lords of the manor and held the
black-letter title-deeds for the delicious stretch of sward over
which they troop. Less stately, but scarce more shy, indigenes are
the hares, lineal descendants of those which gave sport to Oliver
Cromwell. When that grim Puritan succeeded to the lordship of the
saintly cardinal, he was fain, when the Dutch, Scotch and Irish
indulged him with a brief chance to doff his buff coat, to take
relaxation in coursing. We loiter by the margin of the ponds he dug
in the hare-warren, and which were presented as nuisances by the grand
jury in 1662. The complaint was that by turning the water of the "New
River" into them the said Oliver had made the road from Hampton Wick
boggy and unsafe. Another misdemeanor of the deceased was at the same
time and in like manner denounced. This was the stopping up of the
pathway through the warren. The palings were abated, and the path is
open to all nineteenth-century comers, as it probably will be to those
of the twentieth, this being a land of precedent, averse to change.
We may stride triumphantly across the location of the Cromwellian
barricades, and not the less so, perhaps, for certain other barricades
which he helped to erect in the path of privilege.
Directing our steps to the left, or westward, we again reach the river
at the town of Hampton. It is possessed of pretty water-views, but of
little else of note except the memory and the house of Garrick.
Hither the great actor, after positively his last night on the stage,
retired, and settled the long contest for his favor between the Muses
of Tragedy and Comedy by inexorably turning his back on both. He
did not cease to be the delight of polished society, thanks to his
geniality and to literary and conversational powers capable of making
him the intimate of Johnson and Reynolds. More fortunate in his
temperament and temper than his modern successor, Macready, he never
fretted that his profession made him a vagabond by act of Parliament,
or that his adoption of it in place of the law had prevented his
becoming, by virtue of the same formal and supreme stamp, the equal
of the Sampson Brasses plentiful in his day as in ours among their
betters of that honorable vocation. His self-respect was of tougher if
not sounder grain. "Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow,"
was the motto supplied him by his friend and neighbor, Pope, but
obeyed long before he saw it in the poetic form.
[Illustration: GARRICK'S VILLA.]
Garrick's house is separated from its bit of "grounds," which run down
to the water's edge, by the highway. It communicates with them by a
tunnel, suggested by Johnson. It was not a very novel suggestion,
but the excavation deserves notice as probably the one engineering
achievement of old Ursus major. We may fancy the Titan of the pen and
the tea-table, in his snuffy habit as he lived and as photographed
by Boswell, Mrs. Thrale, Fanny Burney, and their epitomizer Macaulay,
diving under the turnpike and emerging among the osiers and water-rats
to offer his orisons at the shrine of Shakespeare. For, in the fashion
of the day, Garrick erected a little brick "temple," and placed
therein a statue of the man it was the study of his life to interpret.
The temple is there yet. The statue, a fine one by Roubillac, now
adorns the hall of the British Museum, a much better place for it.
Garrick, and not Shakespeare, is the _genius loci_.
[Illustration: RIVER SCENE, THAMES DITTON.]
This is but one, if the most striking, of a long row of villas that
overlook the river, each with its comfortable-looking and rotund trees
and trim plat in front, with sometimes a summer-house snuggling down
to the ripples. These riverside colonies, thrown out so rapidly by the
metropolis, have no colonial look. We cannot associate the idea of a
new settlement with rich turf, graveled walks and large trees devoid
of the gaunt and forlorn look suggestive of their fellows' having
been hewn away from their side. The houses have some of the pertness,
rawness and obtrusiveness of youth, but it is not the youth of the
backwoods.
Bob and sinker are in their glory hereabouts. Fishing-rods in the
season and good weather form an established part of the scenery. From
the banks of the stream, from the islands and from box-like boats
called punts in the middle of the water, their slender arches project.
It becomes a source of speculation how the breed of fish is kept up.
Seth Green has never operated on the Thames. Were he to take it under
his wing, a sum in the single rule of three points to the conclusion
that all London would take its seat under these willows and extract
ample sustenance from the invisible herds. If perch and dace can hold
their own against the existing pressure and escape extinction, how
would they multiply with the fostering aid of the spawning-box! We are
not deep in the mysteries of the angle, but we believe English waters
do not boast the catfish. They ought to acquire him. He is almost
as hard to extirpate as the perch, would be quite at home in these
sluggish pools under the lily-pads, and would harmonize admirably with
the eel in the pies and other gross preparations which delight the
British palate. He hath, moreover, a John Bull-like air in his
broad and burly shape, his smooth and unscaly superficies and the
_noli-me-tangere_ character of his dorsal fin. Pity he was unknown to
Izaak Walton!
At this particular point the piscatory effect is intensified by the
dam just above Hampton Bridge. Two parts of a river are especially
fine for fishing. One is the part above the dam, and the other the
part below. These two divisions may be said, indeed, in a large sense
to cover all the Thames. Moulsey Lock, while favorable to fish and
fishermen, is unfavorable to dry land. Yet there is said to be no
malaria. Hampton Court has proved a wholesome residence to every
occupant save its founder.
[Illustration: WOLSEY'S TOWER, ESHER.]
The angler's capital is Thames Ditton, and his capitol the Swan Inn.
Ditton is, like many other pretty English villages, little and old. It
is mentioned in _Domesday Boke_ as belonging to the bishop of Bayeux
in Normandy, famous for the historic piece of tapestry. Wadard,
a gentleman with a Saxon name, held it of him, probably for the
quit--rent of an annual eel-pie, although the consideration is not
stated. The clergy were, by reason of their frequent meagre days and
seasons, great consumers of fish. The phosphorescent character of that
diet may have contributed, if we accept certain modern theories of
animal chemistry as connected in some as yet unexplained way with
psychology, to the intellectual predominance of that class of the
population in the Middle Ages. That occasional fasting, whether
voluntary and systematic as in the cloisters, or involuntary and
altogether the reverse of systematic in Grub street, helps to clear
the wits, with or without the aid of phosphorus, is a fixed fact. The
stomach is apt to be a stumbling-block to the brain. We are not prone
to associate prolonged and productive mental effort with a fair round
belly with fat capon lined. It was not the jolly clerics we read of
in song, but the lean ascetic brethren who were numerous enough to
balance them, that garnered for us the treasures of ancient literature
and kept the mind of Christendom alive, if only in a state of
suspended animation. It was something that they prevented the mace of
chivalry from utterly braining humankind.
The Thames is hereabouts joined from the south by a somewhat
exceptional style of river, characterized by Milton as "the sullen
Mole, that runneth underneath," and by Pope, in dutiful imitation, as
"the sullen Mole that hides his diving flood." Both poets play on the
word. In our judgment, Milton's line is the better, since moles do not
dive and have no flood--two false figures in one line from the precise
and finical Pope! Thomson contributes the epithet of "silent," which
will do well enough as far as it goes, though devoid even of the
average force of Jamie. But, as we have intimated, it is a queer
river. Pouring into the Thames by several mouths that deviate over
quite a delta, its channel two or three miles above is destitute in
dry seasons of water. Its current disappears under an elevation called
White Hill, and does not come again to light for almost two miles,
resembling therein several streams in the United States, notably Lost
River in North-eastern Virginia, which has a subterranean course of
the same character and about the same length, but has not yet found
its Milton or Pope, far superior as it is to its English cousin in
natural beauty.
For this defect art and association amply atone. On the southern side
of the Mole, not far from the underground portion of its course--"the
Swallow" as it is called--stand the charming and storied seats of
Esher and Claremont.
Esher was an ancient residence of the bishops of Winchester. Wolsey
made it for a time his retreat after being ousted from Hampton Court.
A retreat it was to him in every sense. He dismissed his servants
and all state, and cultivated the deepest despondency. His inexorable
master, however, looked down on him, from his ravished towers hard by,
unmoved, and, as the sequel in a few years proved, unsatisfied in
his greed. Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, was called upon for a
contribution. He loyally surrendered to the king the whole estate of
Esher, a splendid mansion with all appurtenances and a park a mile
in diameter. Henry annexed Esher to Hampton Court, and continued his
research for new subjects of spoliation. His daughter Mary gave Esher
back to the see of Winchester. Elizabeth bought it and bestowed it on
Lord Howard of Effingham, who well earned it by his services against
the Armada. Of the families who subsequently owned the place, the
Pelhams are the most noted. Now it has passed from their hands. That
which has alone been preserved of the palace of Wolsey is an embattled
gatehouse that looks into the sluggish Mole, and joins it mayhap in
musing over "the days that we have seen."
[Illustration: CLAREMONT.]
Claremont, its next neighbor, unites, with equal or greater charms of
landscape, in preaching the old story of the decadence of the great.
Lord Clive, the Indian conqueror and speculator, built the house from
the designs of Capability Browne at a cost of over a hundred thousand
pounds. His dwelling and his monument remain to represent Clive. After
him, two or three occupants removed, came Leopold of Belgium, with
his bride, the Princess Charlotte, pet and hope of the British
nation. Their stay was more transient still--a year only, when death
dissipated their dream and cleared the way to the throne for Victoria.
Leopold continued to hold the property, and it became a generation
later the asylum of Louis Philippe. To an ordinary mind the miseries
of any one condemned to make this lovely spot his home are not apt to
present themselves as the acme of despair. A sensation of relief and
lulling repose would be more reasonably expected, especially after
so stormy a career as that of Louis. The change from restless and
capricious Paris to dewy shades and luxurious halls in the heart of
changeless and impregnable England ought, on common principles, to
have promoted the content and prolonged the life of the old king.
Possibly it did, but if so, the French had not many months' escape
from a second Orleans regency, for the exile's experience of Claremont
was brief. We may wander over his lawns, and reshape to ourselves his
reveries. Then we may forget the man who lost an empire as we look up
at the cenotaph of him who conquered one. Both brought grist to
Miller Bull, the fortunate and practical-minded owner of such vast
water-privileges. His water-power seems proof against all floods,
while the corn of all nations must come to his door. Standing under
these drooping elms, by this lazy stream, we hear none of the clatter
of the great mill, and we cease to dream of affixing a period to its
noiseless and effective work.
[Illustration: CLIVE'S MONUMENT.]
If we are not tired of parks for today, five minutes by rail will
carry us west to Oatlands Park, with its appended, and more or less
dependent, village of Walton-upon-Thames. But a surfeit even of
English country-houses and their pleasances is a possible thing;
and nowhere are they more abundant than within an hour's walk of our
present locality. So, taking Ashley Park, Burwood Park, Pains Hill
and many others, as well as the Coway Stakes--said by one school of
antiquarians to have been planted in the Thames by Cæsar, and by
another to be the relics of a fish-weir--Walton Church and Bradshaw's
house, for granted, we shall turn to the east and finish the purlieus
of Hampton with a glance at the old Saxon town of Kingston-on-Thames.
Probably an ardent Kingstonian would indignantly disown the impression
our three words are apt to give of the place. It is a rapidly--growing
town, and "Egbert, the first king of all England," who held a council
at "Kyningestun, famosa ilia locus," in 838, would be at a loss to
find his way through its streets could he revisit it. It has the
population of a Saxon county. Viewed from the massive bridge, with
the church-tower rising above an expanse of sightly buildings, it
possesses the least possible resemblance to the cluster of wattled
huts that may be presumed to have sheltered Egbert and his peers.
[Illustration: PRINCESS CHARLOTTE.]
A more solid memento of the Saxons is preserved in the King's
Stone. This has been of late years set up in the centre of the town,
surrounded with an iron railing, and made visible to all comers,
skeptical or otherwise. Tradition credits it with having been that
upon which the kings of Wessex were crowned, as those of Scotland down
to Longshanks, and after him the English, were on the red sandstone
palladium of Scone. From the list of ante-Norman monarchs said to
have received the sceptre upon it the poetically inclined visitor will
select for chief interest Edwy, whose coronation was celebrated in
great state in his seventeenth year. How he fell in love with and
married secretly his cousin Elgiva; how Saint Dunstan and his equally
saintly though not regularly beatified ally, Odo, archbishop of
Canterbury, indignant at a step taken against their fulminations and
protests, and jealous of the fair queen, tore her from his arms, burnt
with hot iron the bloom out of her cheeks, and finally put her
to death with the most cruel tortures; and how her broken-hearted
boy-lord, dethroned and hunted, died before reaching twenty,--is a
standing dish of the pathetic. Unfortunately, the story, handed down
to us with much detail, appears to be true. We must not accept it,
however, as an average illustration of life in that age of England.
The five hundred years before the Conquest do not equal, in the bloody
character of their annals, the like period succeeding it. Barbarous
enough the Anglo-Saxons were, but wanton cruelty does not seem to have
been one of their traits. To produce it some access of religious fury
was usually requisite. It was on the church doors that the skins of
their Danish invaders were nailed.
[Illustration: WALTON CHURCH.]
[Illustration: KINGSTON CHURCH.]
Kingston has no more Dunstans. Alexandra would be perfectly safe in
its market-place. The rosy maidens who pervade its streets need not
envy her cheeks, and the saints and archbishops who are to officiate
at her husband's induction as head of the Anglican Church have their
anxieties at present directed to wholly different quarters. They have
foes within and foes without, but none in the palace.
Kingston bids fair to revert, after a sort, to the metropolitan
position it boasted once, but has lost for nine centuries. The capital
is coming to it, and will cover the four remaining miles within
a decade or two at the existing rate of progress. Kingston may be
assigned to the suburbs already. It is much nearer London, in point
of time, than Union Square in New York to the City Hall. A slip of
country not yet endowed with trottoirs and gas-lamps intervenes. Call
this park, as you do the square miles of such territory already deep
within the metropolis.
London's jurisdiction, as marked by the Boundary Stone, extends much
farther up the river than we have as yet gone. Nor are the swans her
only vicegerents. The myrmidons of Inspector Bucket, foot and horse,
supplement those natatory representatives. So do the municipalities
encroach upon and overspread the country, as it is eminently proper
they should, seeing that to the charters so long ago exacted, and so
long and so jealously guarded, by the towns, so much of the liberty
enjoyed by English-speaking peoples is due. Large cities may be under
some circumstances, according to an often-quoted saying, plague-spots
on the body politic, but their growth has generally been commensurate
with that of knowledge and order, and indicative of anything but a
diseased condition of the national organism.
But here we are, under the shadow of the departed Nine Elms and of
the official palace of the Odos, deep enough in Lunnon to satisfy the
proudest Cockney, in less time than we have taken in getting off that
last commonplace on political economy. Adam Smith and Jefferson never
undertook to meditate at thirty-five miles an hour.
EDWARD C. BRUCE.
LINES WRITTEN AT VENICE IN OCTOBER, 1865.
Sleep, Venice, sleep! the evening gun resounds
Over the waves that rock thee on their breast:
The bugle blare to kennel calls the hounds
Who sleepless watch thy waking and thy rest.
Sleep till the night-stars do the day-star meet,
And shuddering echoes o'er the water run,
Rippling through every glass-green, wavering street
The stern good-morrow of thy guardian Hun.
Still do thy stones, O Venice! bid rejoice,
With their old majesty, the gazer's eye,
In their consummate grace uttering a voice,
From every line, of blended harmony.
Still glows the splendor of the wondrous dreams
Vouchsafed thy painters o'er each sacred shrine,
And from the radiant visions downward streams
In visible light an influence divine.
Still through thy golden day and silver night
Sings his soft jargon the gay gondolier,
And o'er thy floors of liquid malachite
Slide the black-hooded barks to mystery dear.
Like Spanish beauty in its sable veil,
They rustle sideling through the watery way,
The wild, monotonous cry with which they hail
Each other's passing dying far away.
As each steel prow grazes the island strands
Still ring the sweet Venetian voices clear,
And wondering wanderers from far, free lands
Entranced look round, enchanted listen here.
From the far lands of liberty they come--
England's proud children and her younger race;
Those who possess the Past's most noble home,
And those who claim the Future's boundless space.
Pitying they stand. For thee who would not weep?
Well it beseems these men to weep for thee,
Whose flags (as erst they own) control the deep,
Whose conquering sails o'ershadow every sea.
Yet not in pity only, but in hope,
Spring the hot tears the brave for thee may shed:
Thy chain shall prove but a sand-woven rope;
But sleep thou still: the sky is not yet red.
Sleep till the mighty helmsman of the world,
By the Almighty set at Fortune's wheel,
Steers toward thy freedom, and, once more unfurled,
The banner of St. Mark the sun shall feel.
Then wake, then rise, then hurl away thy yoke,
Then dye with crimson that pale livery,
Whose ghastly white has been the jailer's cloak
For years flung o'er thy shame and misery!
Rise with a shout that down thy Giants' Stair
Shall thy old giants bring with thundering tread--
The blind crusader standing stony there,
And him, the latest of thy mighty dead.
Whose patriot heart broke at the Austrian's foot,
Whose ashes under the black marble lie,
From whose dry dust, stirred by the voice, shall shoot
The glorious growth of living liberty.
FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE.
SKETCHES OF INDIA.
I.
"Come," says my Hindu friend, "let us do Bombay."
The name of my Hindu friend is Bhima Gandharva. At the same time, his
name is _not_ Bhima Gandharva. But--for what is life worth if one may
not have one's little riddle?--in respect that he is _not_ so
named let him be so called, for thus will a pretty contradiction
be accomplished, thus shall I secure at once his privacy and his
publicity, and reveal and conceal him in a breath.
It is eight o'clock in the morning. We have met--Bhima Gandharva and
I--in "The Fort." The Fort is to Bombay much as the Levee, with
its adjacent quarters, is to New Orleans; only it is--one may say
_Hibernice_--a great deal more so. It is on the inner or harbor side
of the island of Bombay. Instead of the low-banked Mississippi, the
waters of a tranquil and charming haven smile welcome out yonder from
between wooded island-peaks. Here Bombay has its counting-houses, its
warehouses, its exchange, its "Cotton Green," its docks. But not its
dwellings. This part of the Fort where we have met is, one may say,
only inhabited for six hours in the day--from ten in the morning until
four in the afternoon. At the former hour Bombay is to be found
here engaged at trade: at the latter it rushes back into the various
quarters outside the Fort which go to make up this many-citied city.
So that at this particular hour of eight in the morning one must
expect to find little here that is alive, except either a philosopher,
a stranger, a policeman or a rat.
"Well, then," I said as Bhima Gandharva finished communicating this
information to me, "we are all here."
"How?"
"There stand you, a philosopher; here I, a stranger; yonder, the
policeman; and, heavens and earth! what a rat!" I accompanied this
exclamation by shooing a big musky fellow from behind a bale of cotton
whither I had just seen him run.
Bhima Gandharva smiled in a large, tranquil way he has, which is like
an Indian plain full of ripe corn. "I find it curious," he said, "to
compare the process which goes on here in the daily humdrum of trade
about this place with that which one would see if one were far up
yonder at the northward, in the appalling solitudes of the mountains,
where trade has never been and will never be. Have you visited the
Himalaya?"
I shook my head.
"Among those prodigious planes of snow," continued the Hindu, "which
when level nevertheless frighten you as if they were horizontal
precipices, and which when perpendicular nevertheless lull you with a
smooth deadly half-sense of confusion as to whether you should refer
your ideas of space to the slope or the plain, there reigns at this
moment a quietude more profound than the Fort's. But presently, as
the sun beats with more fervor, rivulets begin to trickle from exposed
points; these grow to cataracts and roar down the precipices; masses
of undermined snow plunge into the abysses; the great winds of the
Himalaya rise and howl, and every silence of the morning becomes
a noise at noon. A little longer, and the sun again decreases; the
cataracts draw their heads back into the ice as tortoises into their
shells; the winds creep into their hollows, and the snows rest. So
here. At ten the tumult of trade will begin: at four it will quickly
freeze again into stillness. One might even carry this parallelism
into more fanciful extremes. For, as the vapors which lie on the
Himalaya in the form of snow have in time come from all parts of the
earth, so the tide of men that will presently pour in here is made up
of people from the four quarters of the globe. The Hindu, the African,
the Arabian, the Chinese, the Tartar, the European, the American, the
Parsee, will in a little while be trading or working here."
[Illustration: A DWELLING AT MAZAGON.]
"What a complete _bouleversement_," I said, seating myself on a
bale of cotton and looking toward the fleets of steamers and vessels
collected off the great cotton-presses awaiting their cargoes, "this
particular scene effects in the mind of a traveler just from America!
India has been to me, as the average American, a dream of terraced
ghauts, of banyans and bungalows, of Taj Mahals and tigers, of sacred
rivers and subterranean temples, and--and that sort of thing. I
come here and land in a big cotton-yard. I ask myself, 'Have I left
Jonesville--dear Jonesville!--on the other side of the world, in order
to sit on an antipodal cotton-bale?'"
"There is some more of India," said Bhima Gandharva gently. "Let us
look at it a little."
One may construct a good-enough outline map of this wonderful land in
one's mind by referring its main features to the first letter of the
alphabet. Take a capital A; turn it up side down; imagine that the
inverted triangle forming the lower half of the letter is the
Deccan, the left side representing the Western Ghauts, the right side
representing the Eastern Ghauts, and the cross-stroke standing for
the Vindhya Mountains; imagine further that a line from right to left
across the upper ends of the letter, trending upward as it is drawn,
represents the Himalaya, and that enclosed between them and the
Vindhyas is Hindustan proper. Behind--i.e. to the north of--the
centre of this last line rises the Indus, flowing first north-westward
through the Vale of Cashmere, then cutting sharply to the south and
flowing by the way of the Punjab and Scinde to where it empties at
Kurrachee. Near the same spot where the Indus originates rises also
the Brahmaputra, but the latter empties its waters far from the
former, flowing first south-eastward, then cutting southward and
emptying into the Gulf of Bengal. Fixing, now, in the mind the sacred
Ganges and Jumna, coming down out of the Gangetic and Jumnatic peaks
in a general south-easterly direction, uniting at Allahabad and
emptying into the Bay of Bengal, and the Nerbudda River flowing over
from the east to the west, along the southern bases of the Vindhyas,
until it empties at the important city of Brooch, a short distance
north of Bombay, one will have thus located a number of convenient
points and lines sufficient for general references.
This A of ours is a very capital A indeed, being some nineteen hundred
miles in length and fifteen hundred in width. Lying on the western
edge of this peninsula is Bombay Island. It is crossed by the line
of 19° north latitude, and is, roughly speaking, halfway between the
Punjab on the north and Ceylon on the south. Its shape is that of a
lobster, with his claws extended southward and his body trending
a little to the west of north. The larger island of Salsette lies
immediately north, and the two, connected by a causeway, enclose the
noble harbor of Bombay. Salsette approaches near to the mainland at
its northern end, and is connected with it by the railway structure.
These causeways act as break-waters and complete the protection of the
port. The outer claw, next to the Indian Ocean, of the lobster-shaped
Bombay Island is the famous Malabar Hill; the inner claw is the
promontory of Calaba; in the curved space between the two is the body
of shallow water known as the Back Bay, along whose strand so many
strange things are done daily. As one turns into the harbor around
the promontory of Calaba--which is one of the European quarters of the
manifold city of Bombay, and is occupied by magnificent residences
and flower-gardens--one finds just north of it the great docks and
commercial establishments of the Fort; then an enormous esplanade
farther north; across which, a distance of about a mile, going still
northward, is the great Indian city called Black Town, with its motley
peoples and strange bazars; and still farther north is the Portuguese
quarter, known as Mazagon.
As we crossed the great esplanade to the north of the Fort--Bhima
Gandharva and I--and strolled along the noisy streets, I began to
withdraw my complaint. It was not like Jonesville. It was not like any
one place or thing, but like a hundred, and all the hundred _outré_
to the last degree. Hindu beggars, so dirty that they seemed to have
returned to dust before death; three fakirs, armed with round-bladed
daggers with which they were wounding themselves apparently in the
most reckless manner, so as to send streams of blood flowing to the
ground, and redly tattooing the ashes with which their naked bodies
were covered; Parsees with their long noses curving over their
moustaches, clothed in white, sending one's thoughts back to Ormuz,
to Persia, to Zoroaster, to fire-worship and to the strangeness of the
fate which drove them out of Persia more than a thousand years ago,
and which has turned them into the most industrious traders and
most influential citizens of a land in which they are still exiles;
Chinese, Afghans--the Highlanders of the East--Arabs, Africans,
Mahrattas, Malays, Persians, Portuguese half-bloods; men that called
upon Mohammed, men that called upon Confucius, upon Krishna, upon
Christ, upon Gotama the Buddha, upon Rama and Sita, upon Brahma, upon
Zoroaster; strange carriages shaded by red domes that compressed
a whole dream of the East in small, and drawn by humped oxen,
alternating with palanquins, with stylish turnouts of the latest mode,
with cavaliers upon Arabian horses; half-naked workmen, crouched
in uncomfortable workshops and ornamenting sandal-wood boxes; dusky
curb-stone shopkeepers, rushing at me with strenuous offerings of
their wares; lines of low shop-counters along the street, backed by
houses rising in many stories, whose black pillared verandahs
were curiously carved and painted: cries, chafferings, bickerings,
Mussulman prayers, Arab oaths extending from "Praise God that you
exist" to "Praise God _although_ you exist;"--all these things
appealed to the confused senses.
The tall spire of a Hindu temple revealed itself.
[Illustration: HINDU TEMPLE IN THE BLACK TOWN, BOMBAY.]
"It seems to me," I said to Bhima Gandharva, "that your steeples--as
we would call them in Jonesville--represent, in a sort of way, your
cardinal doctrine: they seem to be composed of a multitude of little
steeples, all like the big one, just as you might figure your Supreme
Being in the act of absorbing a large number of the faithful who had
just arrived from the dismal existence below. And then, again, your
steeple looks as if it might be the central figure of your theistic
scheme, surrounded by the three hundred millions of your lesser
deities. How do you get on, Bhima Gandharva, with so many claims on
your worshiping faculties? I should think you would be well lost in
such a jungle of gods?"
"My friend," said Bhima Gandharva, "a short time ago a play was
performed in this city which purported to be a translation into the
Mahratta language of the _Romeo and Juliet_ which Shakespeare wrote.
It was indeed a very great departure from that miraculous work, which
I know well, but among its many deviations from the original was one
which for the mournful and yet humorous truth of it was really worthy
of the Master. Somehow, the translator had managed to get a modern
Englishman into the play, who, every time that one of my countrymen
happened to be found in leg-reach, would give him a lusty kick and cry
out 'Damn fool!' Why is the whole world like this Englishman?--upon
what does it found its opinion that the Hindu is a fool? Is it upon
our religion? Listen! I will recite you some matters out of our
scriptures: Once upon a time Arjuna stood in his chariot betwixt
his army and the army of his foes. These foes were his kinsmen.
Krishna--even that great god Krishna--moved by pity for Arjuna, had
voluntarily placed himself in Arjuna's chariot and made himself the
charioteer thereof. Then--so saith Sanjaya--in order to encourage him,
the ardent old ancestor of the Kurus blew his conch-shell, sounding
loud as the roar of a lion. Then on a sudden trumpets, cymbals, drums
and horns were sounded. That noise grew to an uproar. And, standing on
a huge car drawn by white horses, the slayer of Madhu and the son
of Pandu blew their celestial trumpets. Krishna blew his horn called
Panchajanya; the Despiser of Wealth blew his horn called the Gift
of the Gods; he of dreadful deeds and wolfish entrails blew a great
trumpet called Paundra; King Yudishthira, the son of Kunti, blew the
Eternal Victory; Nakula and Sahadeva blew the Sweet-toned and the
Blooming-with-Jewels. The king of Kashi, renowned for the excellence
of his bow, and Shikandin in his huge chariot, Dhrishtyadumna, and
Virata, and Satyaki, unconquered by his foes, and Drupada and the sons
of Drupadi all together, and the strong-armed son of Subhadrá, each
severally blew their trumpets. That noise lacerated the hearts of the
sons of Dhartarashtra, and uproar resounded both through heaven and
earth. Now when Arjuna beheld the Dhartarashtras drawn up, and that
the flying of arrows had commenced, he raised his bow, and then
addressed these words to Krishna:
"'Now that I have beheld this kindred standing here near together for
the purpose of fighting, my limbs give way and my face is bloodless,
and tremor is produced throughout my body, and my hair stands on end.
My bow Gandiva slips from my hand, and my skin burns. Nor am I able
to remain upright, and my mind is as it were whirling round. Nor do I
perceive anything better even when I shall have slain these relations
in battle, I seek not victory, Krishna, nor a kingdom, nor pleasures.
What should we do with a kingdom, Govinda? What with enjoyments, or
with life itself? Those very men on whose account we might desire a
kingdom, enjoyments or pleasures are assembled for battle. Teachers,
fathers, and even sons, and grandfathers, uncles, fathers-in-law,
grandsons, brothers-in-law, with connections also,--these I would not
wish to slay, though I were slain myself, O Killer of Madhu! not even
for the sake of the sovereignty of the triple world--how much less
for that of this earth! When we had killed the Dhartarashtras, what
pleasure should we have, O thou who art prayed to by mortals? How
could we be happy after killing our own kindred, O Slayer of Madhu?
Even if they whose reason is obscured by covetousness do not perceive
the crime committed in destroying their own tribe, should we not
know how to recoil from such a sin? In the destruction of a tribe
the eternal institutions of the tribe are destroyed. These laws being
destroyed, lawlessness prevails. From the existence of lawlessness the
women of the tribe become corrupted; and when the women are corrupted,
O son of Vrishni! confusion of caste takes place. Confusion of caste
is a gate to hell. Alas! we have determined to commit a great crime,
since from the desire of sovereignty and pleasures we are prepared to
slay our own kin. Better were it for me if the Dhartarashtras, being
armed, would slay me, harmless and unresisting in the fight.'
[Illustration: JAIN TEMPLES AT SUNAGHUR.]
"Having thus spoken in the midst of the battle, Arjuna, whose heart
was troubled with grief, let fall his bow and arrow and sat down on
the bench of the chariot."
"Well," I asked after a short pause, during which the Hindu kept his
eyes fixed in contemplation on the spire of the temple, "what did
Krishna have to say to that?"
"He instructed Arjuna, and said many wise things. I will tell you
some of them, here and there, as they are scattered through the
holy _Bhagavad-Gitá_: Then between the two armies, Krishna, smiling,
addressed these words to him, thus downcast:
"'Thou hast grieved for those who need not be grieved for, yet thou
utterest words of wisdom. The wise grieve not for dead or living. But
never at any period did I or thou or these kings of men not exist, nor
shall any of us at any time henceforward cease to exist. There is no
existence for what does not exist, nor is there any non-existence for
what exists.... These finite bodies have been said to belong to an
eternal, indestructible and infinite spirit.... He who believes that
this spirit can kill, and he who thinks that it can be killed--both of
these are mistaken. It neither kills nor is killed. It is born, and
it does not die.... Unborn, changeless, eternal both as to future and
past time, it is not slain when the body is killed.... As the soul
in this body undergoes the changes of childhood, prime and age, so it
obtains a new body hereafter.... As a man abandons worn-out clothes
and take other new ones, so does the soul quit worn-out bodies and
enter other new ones. Weapons cannot cleave it, fire cannot burn
it, nor can water wet it, nor can wind dry it. It is impenetrable,
incombustible, incapable of moistening and of drying. It is constant;
it can go everywhere; it is firm, immovable and eternal. And even
if thou deem it born with the body and dying with the body, still,
O great-armed one! thou art not right to grieve for it. For to
everything generated death is certain: to everything dead regeneration
is certain.... One looks on the soul as a miracle; another speaks of
it as a miracle; another hears of it as a miracle; but even when he
has heard of it, not one comprehends it.... When a man's heart is
disposed in accordance with his roaming senses, it snatches away his
spiritual knowledge as the wind does a ship on the waves.... He who
does not practice devotion has neither intelligence nor reflection.
And he who does not practice reflection has no calm. How can a man
without calm obtain happiness? The self-governed man is awake in that
which is night to all other beings: that in which other beings are
awake is night to the self-governed. He into whom all desires enter in
the same manner as rivers enter the ocean, which is always full, yet
does not change its bed, can obtain tranquillity.... Love or hate
exists toward the object of each sense. One should not fall into the
power of these two passions, for they are one's adversaries.... Know
that passion is hostile to man in this world. As fire is surrounded
by smoke, and a mirror by rust, and a child by the womb, so is this
universe surrounded by passion.... They say that the senses are great.
The heart is greater than the senses. But the intellect is greater
than the heart, and passion is greater than the intellect....
[Illustration: THE VESTIBULE OF THE GRAND SHAÎTYA OK KARLI.]
"'I and thou, O Arjuna! have passed through many transmigrations. I
know all these. Thou dost not know them.... For whenever there is a
relaxation of duty, O son of Bharata! and an increase of impiety,
I then reproduce myself for the protection of the good and the
destruction of evil-doers. I am produced in every age for the purpose
of establishing duty.... Some sacrifice the sense of hearing and the
other senses in the fire of restraint. Others, by abstaining from
food, sacrifice life in their life. (But) the sacrifice of spiritual
knowledge is better than a material sacrifice.... By this knowledge
thou wilt recognize all things whatever in thyself, and then in me. He
who possesses faith acquires spiritual knowledge. He who is devoid of
faith and of doubtful mind perishes. The man of doubtful mind enjoys
neither this world nor the other, nor final beatitude. Therefore,
sever this doubt which exists in thy heart, and springs from
ignorance, with thy sword of knowledge: turn to devotion and arise, O
son of Bharata!...
"'Learn my superior nature, O hero! by means of which this world is
sustained. I am the cause of the production and dissolution of the
whole universe. There exists no other thing superior to me. On me are
all the worlds suspended, as numbers of pearls on a string. I am the
savor of waters, and the principle of light in the moon and sun, the
mystic syllable _Om_ in the Vedas, the sound in the ether, the essence
of man in men, the sweet smell in the earth; and I am the brightness
in flame, the vitality in all beings, and the power of mortification
in ascetics. Know, O son of Prithá! that I am the eternal seed of all
things which exist. I am the intellect of those who have intellect:
I am the strength of the strong.... And know that all dispositions,
whether good, bad or indifferent, proceed also from me. I do not exist
in them, but they in me.... I am dear to the spiritually wise beyond
possessions, and he is dear to me. A great-minded man who is convinced
that _Vasudevu_ (Krishna) _is everything_ is difficult to find....
If one worships any inferior personage with faith, I make his faith
constant. Gifted with such faith, he seeks the propitiation of this
personage, and from him receives the pleasant objects of his desires,
which (however) were sent by me alone. But the reward of these
little-minded men is finite. They who sacrifice to the gods go to the
gods: they who worship me come to me. I am the immolation. I am the
whole sacrificial rite. I am the libation to ancestors. I am the
drug. I am the incantation. I am the fire. I am the incense. I am
the father, the mother, the sustainer, the grandfather of this
universe--the path, the supporter, the master, the witness, the
habitation, the refuge, the friend, the origin, the dissolution, the
place, the receptacle, the inexhaustible seed. I heat. I withhold
and give the rain. I am ambrosia and death, the existing and the
non-existing. Even those who devoutly worship other gods with the gift
of faith worship me, but only improperly. I am the same to all beings.
I have neither foe nor friend. I am the beginning and the middle and
the end of existing things. Among bodies I am the beaming sun. Among
senses I am the heart. Among waters I am the ocean. Among mountains I
am Himalaya. Among trees I am the banyan; among men, the king; among
weapons, the thunderbolt; among things which count, time; among
animals, the lion; among purifiers, the wind. I am Death who seizes
all: I am the birth of those who are to be. I am Fame, Fortune,
Speech, Memory, Meditation, Perseverance and Patience among feminine
words. I am the game of dice among things which deceive: I am splendor
among things which are shining. Among tamers I am the rod; among means
of victory I am polity; among mysteries I am silence, the knowledge of
the wise....
"'They who know me to be the God of this universe, the God of gods and
the God of worship--they who know me to be the God of this universe,
the God of gods and the God of worship--yea, they who know me to be
these things in the hour of death, they know me indeed.'"
[Illustration: SCULPTURED FIGURES IN THE VESTIBULE OF THE GREAT
SHAÎTYA OF KARLI.]
When my friend finished these words there did not seem to be anything
particular left in heaven or earth to talk about. At any rate, there
was a dead pause for several minutes. Finally, I asked--and I protest
that in contrast with the large matters wherof Bhima Gandharva had
discoursed my voice (which is American and slightly nasal) sounded
like nothing in the world so much as the squeak of a sick rat--"When
were these things written?"
"At least nineteen hundred and seventy-five years ago, we feel sure.
How much earlier we do not know."
We now directed our course toward the hospital for sick and disabled
animals which has been established here in the most crowded portion of
Black Town by that singular sect called the Jains, and which is only
one of a number of such institutions to be found in the large cities
of India. This sect is now important more by influence than by numbers
in India, many of the richest merchants of the great Indian cities
being among its adherents, though by the last census of British India
there appears to be but a little over nine millions of Jains and
Buddhists together, out of the one hundred and ninety millions of
Hindus in British India. The tenets of the Jains are too complicated
for description here, but it may be said that much doubt exists as
to whether it is an old religion of which Brahmanism and Buddhism are
varieties, or whether it is itself a variety of Buddhism. Indeed,
it does not seem well settled whether the pure Jain doctrine
was atheistical or theistical. At any rate, it is sufficiently
differentiated from Brahmanism by its opposite notion of castes, and
from Buddhism by its cultus of nakedness, which the Buddhists abhor.
The Jains are split into two sects--the _Digambaras_, or nude Jains,
and the _Svetambaras_, or clothed Jains, which latter sect seem to
be Buddhists, who, besides the Tirthankars (i.e. mortals who have
acquired the rank of gods by devout lives, in whom all the Jains
believe), worship also the various divinities of the Vishnu system.
The Jains themselves declare this system to date from a period ten
thousand years before Christ, and they practically support this
traditional antiquity by persistently regarding and treating the
Buddhists as heretics from their system. At any event, their
religion is an old one. They seem to be the gymnosophists, or naked
philosophers, described by Clitarchos as living in India at the time
of the expedition of Alexander, and their history crops out in various
accounts--that of Clement of Alexandria, then of the Chinese Fu-Hian
in the fourth and fifth centuries, and of the celebrated Chinese
Hiouen-Tsang in the seventh century, at which last period they appear
to have been the prevailing sect in India, and to have increased
in favor until in the twelfth century the Rajpoots, who had become
converts to Jainism, were schismatized into Brahmanism and deprived
the naked philosophers of their prestige.
The great distinguishing feature of the Jains is the extreme to which
they push the characteristic tenderness felt by the Hindus for animals
of all descriptions. Jaina is, distinctly, _the purified_. The priests
eat no animal food; indeed, they are said not to eat at all after
noon, lest the insects then abounding should fly into their mouths
and be crushed unwittingly. They go with a piece of muslin bound over
their mouths, in order to avoid the same catastrophe, and carry a soft
brush wherewith to remove carefully from any spot upon which they are
about to sit such insects as might be killed thereby.
"Ah, how my countryman Bergh would luxuriate in this scene!" I said as
we stood looking upon the various dumb exhibitions of so many phases
of sickness, of decrepitude and of mishap--quaint, grotesque, yet
pathetic withal--in the precincts of the Jain hospital. Here were
quadrupeds and bipeds, feathered creatures and hairy creatures, large
animals and small, shy and tame, friendly and predatory--horses,
horned cattle, rats, cats, dogs, jackals, crows, chickens; what not.
An attendant was tenderly bandaging the blinking lids of a sore-eyed
duck: another was feeding a blind crow, who, it must be confessed,
looked here very much like some fat member of the New York Ring
cunningly availing himself of the more toothsome rations in the sick
ward of the penitentiary. My friend pointed out to me a heron with a
wooden leg. "Suppose a gnat should break his shoulder-blade," I said,
"would they put his wing in a sling?"
[Illustrations: INTERIOR OF THE GREAT SHAÎTYA OF KARLI.]
Bhima Gandharva looked me full in the face, and, smiling gently, said,
"They would if they could."
The Jains are considered to have been the architects _par excellence_
of India, and there are many monuments, in all styles, of their skill
in this kind. The strange statues of the Tirthankars in the gorge
called the Ourwhaï of Gwalior were (until injured by the "march of
improvement") among the most notable of the forms of rock-cutting.
These vary in size from statuettes of a foot in height to colossal
figures of sixty feet, and nothing can be more striking than these
great forms, hewn from the solid rock, represented entirely nude,
with their impassive countenances, which remind every traveler of
the Sphinx, their grotesque ears hanging down to their shoulders, and
their heads, about which plays a ring of serpents for a halo, or out
of which grows the mystical three-branched _Kalpa Vrich_, or Tree of
Knowledge.
The sacred hill of Sunaghur, lying a few miles to the south of
Gwalior, is one of the Meccas of the Jains, and is covered with
temples in many styles, which display the fertility of their
architectural invention: there are over eighty of these structures in
all.
"And now," said Bhima Gandharva next day, "while you are thinking upon
temples, and wondering if the Hindus have all been fools, you should
complete your collection of mental materials by adding to the sight
you have had of a Hindu temple proper, and to the description you have
had of Jain temples proper, a sight of those marvelous subterranean
works of the Buddhists proper which remain to us. We might select
our examples of these either at Ellora or at Ajunta (which are on the
mainland a short distance to the north-east of Bombay), the latter
of which contains the most complete series of purely Buddhistic caves
known in the country; or, indeed, we could find Buddhistic caves just
yonder on Salsette. But let us go and see Karli at once: it is the
largest _shaîtya_ (or cave-temple) in India."
Accordingly, we took railway at Bombay, sped along the isle, over the
bridge to the island of Salsette, along Salsette to Tannah, then
over the bridge which connects Salsette with the mainland, across the
narrow head of Bombay harbor, and so on to the station at Khandalla,
about halfway between Bombay and Poonah, where we disembarked. The
caves of Karli are situated but a few miles from Khandalla, and in
a short time we were standing in front of a talus at the foot of a
sloping hill whose summit was probably five to six hundred feet high.
A flight of steps cut in the hillside led up to a ledge running out
from an escarpment which was something above sixty feet high before
giving off into the slope of the mountain. From the narrow and
picturesque valley a flight of steps cut in the hillside led up to the
platform. We could not see the façade of the shaîtya on account of
the concealing boscage of trees. On ascending the steps, however, and
passing a small square Brahmanic chapel, where we paid a trifling
fee to the priests who reside there for the purpose of protecting the
place, the entire front of the excavation revealed itself, and with
every moment of gazing grew in strangeness and solemn mystery.
The shaîtya is hewn in the solid rock of the mountain. Just to the
left of the entrance stands a heavy pillar (_Silasthamba_) completely
detached from the temple, with a capital upon whose top stand four
lions back to back. On this pillar is an inscription in Pali, which
has been deciphered, and which is now considered to fix the date
of the excavation conclusively at not later than the second century
before the Christian era. The eye took in at first only the vague
confusion of windows and pillars cut in the rock. It is supposed
that originally a music-gallery stood here in front, consisting of
a balcony supported out from the two octagonal pillars, and probably
roofed or having a second balcony above. But the woodwork is now gone.
One soon felt one's attention becoming concentrated, however, upon a
great arched window cut in the form of a horseshoe, through which one
could look down what was very much like the nave of a church running
straight back into the depths of the hill. Certainly, at first, as one
passes into the strange vestibule which intervenes still between the
front and the interior of the shaîtya, one does not think at all--one
only _feels_ the dim sense of mildness raying out from the great
faces of the elephants, and of mysterious far-awayness conveyed by the
bizarre postures of the sculptured figures on the walls.
Entering the interior, a central nave stretches back between two
lines of pillars, each of whose capitals supports upon its abacus two
kneeling elephants: upon each elephant are seated two figures, most
of which are male and female pairs. The nave extends eighty-one feet
three inches back, the whole length of the temple being one hundred
and two feet three inches. There are fifteen pillars on each side
the nave, which thus enclose between themselves and the wall two
side-aisles, each about half the width of the nave, the latter being
twenty-five feet and seven inches in width, while the whole width from
wall to wall is forty-five feet and seven inches. At the rear, in a
sort of apse, are seven plain octagonal pillars--the other thirty are
sculptured. Just in front of these seven pillars is the _Daghaba_--a
domed structure covered by a wooden parasol. The Daghaba is the
reliquary in which or under which some relic of Gotama Buddha
is enshrined. The roof of the shaîtya is vaulted, and ribs of
teak-wood--which could serve no possible architectural purpose--reveal
themselves, strangely enough, running down the sides.
As I took in all these details, pacing round the dark aisles, and
finally resuming my stand near the entrance, from which I perceived
the aisles, dark between the close pillars and the wall, while the
light streamed through the great horseshoe window full upon the
Daghaba at the other end, I exclaimed to Bhima Gandharva, "Why, it is
the very copy of a Gothic church--the aisles, the nave, the vaulted
roof, and all--and yet you tell me it was excavated two thousand years
ago!"
"The resemblance has struck every traveler," he replied. "And, strange
to say, all the Buddhist cave-temples are designed upon the same
general plan. There is always the organ-loft, as you see there; always
the three doors, the largest one opening on the nave, the smaller ones
each on its side-aisle; always the window throwing its light directly
on the Daghaba at the other end; always, in short, the general
arrangement of the choir of a Gothic round or polygonal apse
cathedral. It is supposed that the devotees were confined to the front
part of the temple, and that the great window through which the light
comes was hidden from view, both outside by the music-galleries and
screens, and inside through the disposition of the worshipers in
front. The gloom of the interior was thus available to the priests for
the production of effects which may be imagined."
Emerging from the temple, we saw the Buddhist monastery (_Vihara_),
which is a series of halls and cells rising one above the other in
stories connected by flights of steps, all hewn in the face of the
hill at the side of the temple. We sat down on a fragment of rock near
a stream of water with which a spring in the hillside fills a little
pool at the entrance of the Vihara. "Tell me something of Gotama
Buddha," I said. "Recite some of his deliverances, O Bhima
Gandharva!--you who know everything."
"I will recite to you from the _Sutta Nipata_, which is supposed by
many pundits of Ceylon to contain several of the oldest examples of
the Pali language. It professes to give the conversation of Buddha,
who died five hundred and forty-three years before Christ lived on
earth; and these utterances are believed by scholars to have been
brought together at least more than two hundred years before the
Christian era. The _Mahámangala Sutta_, of the _Nipata Sutta_, says,
for example: 'Thus it was heard by me. At a certain time Bhagavá
(Gotama Buddha) lived at Sávatthi in Jetavana, in the garden of
Anáthupindika. Then, the night being far advanced, a certain god,
endowed with a radiant color illuminating Jetavana completely, came to
where Bhagavá was, [and] making obeisance to him, stood on one side.
And, standing on one side, the god addressed Bhagavá in [these]
verses:
"1. Many gods and men, longing after what is good, have
considered many things as blessings. Tell us what is the
greatest blessing.
"2. Buddha said: Not serving fools, but serving the wise, and
honoring those worthy of being honored: this is the greatest
blessing.
"3. The living in a fit country, meritorious deeds done in a
former existence, the righteous establishment of one's self:
this is the greatest blessing.
"4. Extensive knowledge and science, well-regulated discipline
and well-spoken speech: this is the greatest blessing.
"5. The helping of father and mother, the cherishing of child
and wife, and the following of a lawful calling: this is the
greatest blessing.
"6. The giving alms, a religious life, aid rendered to
relatives, blameless acts: this is the greatest blessing.
"7. The abstaining from sins and the avoiding them, the
eschewing of intoxicating drink, diligence in good deeds: this
is the greatest blessing.
"8. Reverence and humility, contentment and gratefulness, the
hearing of the law in the right time: this is the greatest
blessing.
"9. Patience and mild speech, the association with those
who have subdued their passions, the holding of religious
discourse in the right time: this is the greatest blessing.
"10. Temperance and charity, the discernment of holy truth, the
perception of Nibbána: this is the greatest blessing.
"11. The mind of any one unshaken by the ways of the world,
exemption from sorrow, freedom from passion, and security:
this is the greatest blessing.
"12. Those who having done these things become invincible on
all sides, attain happiness on all sides: this is the greatest
blessing."
"At another time also Gotama Buddha was discoursing on caste. You know
that the Hindus are divided into the Brahmans, or the priestly
caste, which is the highest; next the Kshatriyas, or the warrior and
statesman caste; next the Vaishyas, or the herdsman and farmer caste;
lastly, the Sudras, or the menial caste. Now, once upon a time the two
youths Vásettha and Bháradvaja had a discussion as to what constitutes
a Brahman. Thus, Vásettha and Bháradvaja went to the place where
Bhagavá was, and having approached him were well pleased with him; and
having finished a pleasing and complimentary conversation, they sat
down on one side. Vásettha, who sat down on one side, addressed Buddha
in verse: ...
"3. O Gotama! we have a controversy regarding [the distinctions
of] birth. Thus know, O wise one! the point of difference
between us: Bháradvaja says that a Brahman is such by reason
of his birth.
"4. But I affirm that he is such by reason of his conduct....
"7. Bhagavá replied: ...
"53. I call him alone a Brahman who is fearless, eminent,
heroic, a great sage, a conqueror, freed from attachments--one
who has bathed in the waters of wisdom, and is a Buddha.
"54. I call him alone a Brahman who knows his former abode, who
sees both heaven and hell, and has reached the extinction of
births.
"55. What is called 'name' or 'tribe' in the world arises from
usage only. It is adopted here and there by common consent.
"56. It comes from long and uninterrupted usage, and from the
false belief of the ignorant. Hence the ignorant assert that a
Brahman is such from birth.
"57. One is not a Brahman nor a non-Brahman by birth: by his
conduct alone is he a Brahman, and by his conduct alone is he
a non-Brahman,
"58. By his conduct he is a husbandman, an artisan, a merchant,
a servant;
"59. By his conduct he is a thief, a warrior, a sacrificer, a
king....
"62. One is a Brahman from penance, charity, observance of the
moral precepts and the subjugation of the passions. Such is
the best kind of Brahmanism."
"That would pass for very good republican doctrine in Jonesville," I
said. "What a pity you have all so backslidden from your orthodoxies
here in India, Bhima Gandharva! In my native land there is a region
where many orange trees grow. Sometimes, when a tree is too heavily
fertilized, it suddenly shoots out in great luxuriance, and looks as
if it were going to make oranges enough for the whole world, so to
speak. But somehow, no fruit comes: it proves to be all wood and no
oranges, and presently the whole tree changes and gets sick and good
for nothing. It is a disease which the natives call 'the dieback.'
Now, it seems to me that when you old Aryans came from--from--well,
from wherever you _did_ come from--you branched out at first into a
superb magnificence of religions and sentiments and imaginations and
other boscage. But it looks now as if you were really bad off with the
dieback."
It was, however, impossible to perceive that Bhima Gandharva's smile
was like anything other than the same plain full of ripe corn.
LADY ARTHUR EILDON'S DYING LETTER.
I.
Lady Arthur Eildon was a widow: she was a remarkable woman, and her
husband, Lord Arthur Eildon, had been a remarkable man. He was a
brother of the duke of Eildon, and was very remarkable in his day for
his love of horses and dogs. But this passion did not lead him into
any evil ways: he was a thoroughly upright, genial man, with a frank
word for every one, and was of course a general favorite. "He'll just
come in and crack away as if he was ane o' oorsels," was a remark
often made concerning him by the people on his estates; for he had
estates which had been left to him by an uncle, and which, with
the portion that fell to him as a younger son, yielded him an ample
revenue, so that he had no need to do anything.
What talents he might have developed in the army or navy, or even
in the Church, no one knows, for he never did anything in this world
except enjoy himself; which was entirely natural to him, and not the
hard work it is to many people who try it. He was in Parliament for
a number of years, but contented himself with giving his vote. He
did not distinguish himself. He was not an able or intellectual man:
people said he would never set the Thames on fire, which was true;
but if an open heart and hand and a frank tongue are desirable things,
these he had. As he took in food, and it nourished him without further
intervention on his part, so he took in enjoyment and gave it out to
the people round him with equal unconsciousness. Let it not be said
that such a man as this is of no value in a world like ours: he is at
once an anodyne and a stimulant of the healthiest and most innocent
kind.
As was meet, he first saw the lady who was to be his wife in the
hunting-field. She was Miss Garscube of Garscube, an only child and
an heiress. She was a fast young lady when as yet fastness was a rare
development:--a harbinger of the fast period, the one swallow that
presages summer, but does not make it--and as such much in the mouths
of the public.
Miss Garscube was said to be clever--she was certainly eccentric--and
she was no beauty, but community of tastes in the matter of horses and
dogs drew her and Lord Arthur together.
On one of the choicest of October days, when she was following the
hounds, and her horse had taken the fences like a creature with wings,
he came to one which he also flew over, but fell on the other side,
throwing off his rider--on soft grass, luckily. But almost before an
exclamation of alarm could leave the mouths of the hunters behind,
Miss Garscube was on her feet and in the saddle, and her horse away
again, as if both had been ignorant of the little mishap that had
occurred. Lord Arthur was immediately behind, and witnessed this bit
of presence of mind and pluck with unfeigned admiration: it won his
heart completely; and on her part she enjoyed the genuineness of his
homage as she had never enjoyed anything before, and from that day
things went on and prospered between them.
People who knew both parties regretted this, and shook their heads
over it, prophesying that no good could come of it. Miss Garscube's
will had never been crossed in her life, and she was a "clever" woman:
Lord Arthur would not submit to her domineering ways, and she would
wince under and be ashamed of his want of intellect. All this was
foretold and thoroughly believed by people having the most perfect
confidence in their own judgment, so that Lord Arthur and his wife
ought to have been, in the very nature of things, a most wretched
pair. But, as it turned out, no happier couple existed in Great
Britain. Their qualities must have been complementary, for they
dovetailed into each other as few people do; and the wise persons
who had predicted the contrary were entirely thrown out in their
calculations--a fact which they speedily forgot; nor did it diminish
their faith in their own wisdom, as, indeed, how could one slight
mistake stand against an array of instances in which their predictions
had been verified to the letter?
Lord Arthur might not have the intellect which fixes the attention of
a nation, but he had plenty for his own fireside--at least, his wife
never discovered any want of it--and as for her strong will, they
had only one strong will between them, so that there could be no
collision. Being thus thoroughly attached and thoroughly happy, what
could occur to break up this happiness? A terrible thing came to
pass. Having had perfect health up to middle life, an acutely painful
disease seized Lord Arthur, and after tormenting him for more than a
year it changed his face and sent him away.
There is nothing more striking than the calmness and dignity with
which people will meet death--even people from whom this could not
have been expected. No one who did not know it would have guessed how
Lord Arthur was suffering, and he never spoke of it, least of all to
his wife; while she, acutely aware of it and vibrating with sympathy,
never spoke of it to him; and they were happy as those are who know
that they are drinking the last drops of earthly happiness. He died
with his wife's hand in his grasp: she gave the face--dead, but with
the appearance of life not vanished from it--one long, passionate
kiss, and left him, nor ever looked on it again.
Lady Arthur secluded herself for some weeks in her own room, seeing no
one but the servants who attended her; and when she came forth it was
found that her eccentricity had taken a curious turn: she steadily
ignored the death of her husband, acting always as if he had gone on a
journey and might at any moment return, but never naming him unless it
was absolutely necessary. She found comfort in this simulated delusion
no doubt, just as a child enjoys a fairy-tale, knowing perfectly well
all the time that it is not true. People in her own sphere said
her mind was touched: the common people about her affirmed without
hesitation that she was "daft." She rode no more, but she kept all
the horses and dogs as usual. She cultivated a taste she had for
antiquities; she wrote poetry--- ballad poetry--which people who were
considered judges thought well of; and flinging these and other things
into the awful chasm that had been made in her life, she tried her
best to fill it up. She set herself to consider the poor man's case,
and made experiments and gave advice which confirmed her poorer
brethren in their opinion that she was daft; but as her hand was
always very wide open, and they pitied her sorrow, she was much loved,
although they laughed at her zeal in preserving old ruins and her
wrath if an old stone was moved, and told, and firmly believed, that
she wrote and posted letters to Lord Arthur. What was perhaps more to
the purpose of filling the chasm than any of these things, Lady Arthur
adopted a daughter, an orphan child of a cousin of her own, who came
to her two years after her husband's death, a little girl of nine.
II.
Alice Garscube's education was not of the stereotyped kind. When
she came to Garscube Hall, Lady Arthur wrote to the head-master of
a normal school asking if he knew of a healthy, sagacious,
good-tempered, clever girl who had a thorough knowledge of the
elementary branches of education and a natural taste for teaching. Mr.
Boyton, the head-master, replied that he knew of such a person whom he
could entirely recommend, having all the qualities mentioned; but
when he found that it was not a teacher for a village school that her
ladyship wanted, but for her own relation, he wrote to say that he
doubted the party he had in view would hardly be suitable: her father,
who had been dead for some years, was a workingman, and her mother,
who had died quite recently, supported herself by keeping a little
shop, and she herself was in appearance and manner scarcely enough
of the lady for such a situation. Now, Lady Arthur, though a firm
believer in birth and race, and by habit and prejudice an aristocrat
and a Tory, was, we know, eccentric by nature, and Nature will always
assert itself. She wrote to Mr. Boyton that if the girl he recommended
was all he said, she was a lady inside, and they would leave the
outside to shift for itself. Her ladyship had considered the matter.
She could get decayed gentlewomen and clergymen and officers'
daughters by the dozen, but she did not want a girl with a sickly
knowledge of everything, and very sickly ideas of her own merits and
place and work in the world: she wanted a girl of natural sagacity,
who from her cradle had known that she came into the world to do
something, and had learned how to do it.
Miss Adamson, the normal-school young lady recommended, wrote thus to
Lady Arthur:
"MADAM: I am very much tempted to take the situation you offer
me. If I were teacher of a village school, as I had intended,
when my work in the school was over I should have had my time
to myself; and I wish to stipulate that when the hours of
teaching Miss Garscube are over I may have the same privilege.
If you engage me, I think, so far as I know myself, you will
not be disappointed.
"I am," etc. etc.
To which Lady Arthur:
"So far as I can judge, you are the very thing I want. Come,
and we shall not disagree about terms," etc. etc.
Thus it came about that Miss Garscube was unusually lucky in the
matter of her education and Miss Adamson in her engagement. Although
eccentric to the pitch of getting credit for being daft, Lady Arthur
had a strong vein of masculine sense, which in all essential things
kept her in the right path. Miss Adamson and she suited each other
thoroughly, and the education of the two ladies and the child may be
said to have gone on simultaneously. Miss Adamson had an absorbing
pursuit: she was an embryo artist, and she roused a kindred taste in
her pupil; so that, instead of carrying on her work in solitude, as
she had expected to do, she had the intense pleasure of sympathy
and companionship. Lady Arthur often paid them long visits in their
studio; she herself sketched a little, but she had never excelled in
any single pursuit except horsemanship, and that she had given up at
her husband's death, as she had given up keeping much company or going
often into society.
In this quiet, unexciting, regular life Lady Arthur's antiquarian
tastes grew on her, and she went on writing poetry, the quantity of
which was more remarkable than the quality, although here and there in
the mass of ore there was an occasional sparkle from fine gold (there
are few voluminous writers in which this accident does not occur). She
superintended excavations, and made prizes of old dust and stones
and coins and jewelry (or what was called ancient jewelry: it looked
ancient enough, but more like rusty iron to the untrained eye than
jewelry) and cooking utensils supposed to have been used by some noble
savages or other. Of these and such like she had a museum, and she
visited old monuments and cairns and Roman camps and Druidical remains
and old castles, and all old things, with increasing interest. There
were a number of places near or remote to which she was in the habit
of making periodical pilgrimages--places probably dear to her from
whim or association or natural beauty or antiquity. When she fixed a
time for such an excursion, no weather changed her purpose: it might
pour rain or deep snow might be on the ground: she only put four
horses to her carriage instead of two, and went on her way. She was
generally accompanied in these expeditions by her two young friends,
who got into the spirit of the thing and enjoyed them amazingly. They
were in the habit of driving to some farm-house, where they left the
carriage and on foot ascended the hill they had come to call on, most
probably a hill with the marks of a Roman camp on it--there are many
such in the south of Scotland--hills called "the rings" by the people,
from the way in which the entrenchments circle round them like rings.
Dear to Lady Arthur's heart was such a place as this. Even when the
ground was covered with snow or ice she would ascend with the help of
a stick or umbrella, a faint adumbration of the Alpine Club when as
yet the Alpine Club lurked in the future and had given no hint of its
existence. On the top of such a hill she would eat luncheon, thinking
of the dust of legions beneath her foot, and drink wine to the memory
of the immortals. The coachman and the footman who toiled up the hill
bearing the luncheon-basket, and slipping back two steps for every one
they took forward, had by no means the same respect for the immortal
heroes. The coachman was an old servant, and had a great regard for
Lady Arthur both as his mistress and as a lady of rank, besides being
accustomed to and familiar with her whims, and knowing, as he said,
"the best and the warst o' her;" but the footman was a new acquisition
and young, and he had not the wisdom to see at all times the duty of
giving honor to whom honor is due, nor yet had he the spirit of the
born flunkey; and his intercourse with the nobility, unfortunately,
had not impressed him with any other idea than that they were mortals
like himself; so he remarked to his fellow-servant, "Od! ye wad think,
if she likes to eat her lunch amang snawy slush, she might get enough
of it at the fut o' the hill, without gaun to the tap."
"Weel, I'll no deny," said the older man, "but what it's daftlike, but
if it is her leddyship's pleasure, it's nae business o' oors."
"Pleasure!" said the youth: "if she ca's this pleasure, her friends
should see about shutting her up: it's time."
"She says the Romans once lived here," said John.
"If they did," Thomas said, "I daur say _they_ had mair sinse than sit
down to eat their dinner in the middle o' snaw if they had a house to
tak it in."
"Her leddyship does na' tak the cauld easy," said John.
"She has the constitution o' a horse," Thomas remarked.
"Man," said John, "that shows a' that ye ken about horses: there's no
a mair delicate beast on the face o' the earth than the horse. They
tell me a' the horses in London hae the influenza the now."
"Weel, it'll be our turn next," said Thomas, "if we dinna tak
something warm."
When luncheon was over her ladyship as often as not ordered her
servants to take the carriage round by the turnpike-road to a given
point, where she arranged to meet it, while she herself struck right
over the hills as the crow flies, crossing the burns on her way in the
same manner as the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, only the water did
not stand up on each side and leave dry ground for her to tread on;
but she ignored the water altogether, and walked straight through.
The young ladies, knowing this, took an extra supply of stockings and
shoes with them, but Lady Arthur despised such effeminate ways and
drove home in the footgear she set out in. She was a woman of robust
health, and having grown stout and elderly and red-faced, when out
on the tramp and divested of externals she might very well have been
taken for the eccentric landlady of a roadside inn or the mistress
of a luncheon-bar; and probably her young footman did not think she
answered to her own name at all.
There is a divinity that doth hedge a king, but it is the king's
wisdom to keep the hedge close and well trimmed and allow no gaps: if
there are gaps, people see through them and the illusion is destroyed.
Lady Arthur was not a heroine to her footman; and when she traversed
the snow-slush and walked right through the burns, he merely endorsed
the received opinion that she wanted "twopence of the shilling." If
she had been a poor woman and compelled to take such a journey in such
weather, people would have felt sorry for her, and have been ready to
subscribe to help her to a more comfortable mode of traveling; but
in Lady Arthur's case of course there was nothing to be done but to
wonder at her eccentricity.
But her ladyship knew what she was about. The sleep as well as the
food of the laboring man is sweet, and if nobility likes to labor, it
will partake of the poor man's blessing. The party arrived back among
the luxurious appointments of Garscube Hall (which were apt to pall on
them at times) legitimately and bodily _tired_, and that in itself
was a sensation worth working for. They had braved difficulty and
discomfort, and not for a nonsensical and fruitless end, either: it
can never be fruitless or nonsensical to get face to face with Nature
in any of her moods. The ice-locked streams, the driven snow, the
sleep of vegetation, a burst of sunshine over the snow, the sough of
the winter wind, Earth waiting to feel the breath of spring on her
face to waken up in youth and beauty again, like the sleeping princess
at the touch of the young prince,--all these are things richly to
be enjoyed, especially by strong, healthy people: let chilly and
shivering mortals sing about cozy fires and drawn curtains if they
like. Besides, Miss Adamson had the eye of an artist, upon which
nothing, be it what it may, is thrown away.
But an expedition to a hill with "rings" undertaken on a long
midsummer day looked fully more enjoyable to the common mind: John,
and even the footman approved of that, and another individual, who
had become a frequent visitor at the hall, approved of it very highly
indeed, and joined such a party as often as he could.
This was George Eildon, the only son of a brother of the late Lord
Arthur.
Now comes the tug--well, not of war, certainly, but, to change the
figure--now comes the cloud no bigger than a man's hand which is to
obscure the quiet sunshine of the regular and exemplary life of these
three ladies.
Having been eight years at Garscube Hall, as a matter of necessity
and in the ordinary course of Nature, Alice Garscube had grown up to
womanhood. With accustomed eccentricity, Lady Arthur entirely
ignored this. As for bringing her "out," as the phrase is, she had
no intention of it, considering that one of the follies of life: Lady
Arthur was always a law to herself. Alice was a shy, amiable girl, who
loved her guardian fervently (her ladyship had the knack of gaining
love, and also of gaining the opposite in pretty decisive measure),
and was entirely swayed by her; indeed, it never occurred to her
to have a will of her own, for her nature was peculiarly sweet and
guileless.
III.
Lady Arthur thought George Eildon a good-natured, rattling lad, with
very little head. This was precisely the general estimate that had
been formed of her late husband, and people who had known both thought
George the very fac-simile of his uncle Arthur. If her ladyship had
been aware of this, it would have made her very indignant: she had
thought her husband perfect while living, and thought of him as very
much more than perfect now that he lived only in her memory. But she
made George very welcome as often as he came: she liked to have him in
the house, and she simply never thought of Alice and him in connection
with each other. She always had a feeling of pity for George.
"You know," she would say to Miss Adamson and Alice--"you know, George
was of consequence for the first ten years of his life: it was thought
that his uncle the duke might never marry, and he was the heir;
but when the duke married late in life and had two sons, George was
extinguished, poor fellow! and it was hard, I allow."
"It is not pleasant to be a poor gentleman," said Miss Adamson.
"It is not only not pleasant," said Lady Arthur, "but it is a
false position, which is very trying, and what few men can fill to
advantage. If George had great abilities, it might be different, with
his connection, but I doubt he is doomed to be always as poor as a
church mouse."
"He may get on in his profession perhaps," said Alice, sharing in
Lady Arthur's pity for him. (George Eildon had been an attaché to some
foreign embassy.)
"Never," said Lady Arthur decisively. "Besides, it is a profession
that is out of date now. Men don't go wilily to work in these days;
but if they did, the notion of poor George, who could not keep a
secret or tell a lie with easy grace if it were to save his life--the
notion of making him a diplomatist is very absurd. No doubt statesmen
are better without original ideas--their business is to pick out the
practical ideas of other men and work them well--but George wants
ability, poor fellow! They ought to have put him into the Church: he
reads well, he could have read other men's sermons very effectively,
and the duke has some good livings in his gift."
Now, Miss Adamson had been brought up a Presbyterian of the
Presbyterians, and among people to whom "the paper" was abhorrent:
to read a sermon was a sin--to read another man's sermon was a sin
of double-dyed blackness. However, either her opinions were being
corrupted or enlightened, either she was growing lax in principle or
she was learning the lesson of toleration, for she allowed the remarks
of Lady Arthur to pass unnoticed, so that that lady did not need to
advance the well-known opinion and practice of Sir Roger de Coverley
to prop her own.
Miss Adamson merely said, "Do you not underrate Mr. Eildon's
abilities?"
"I think not. If he had abilities, he would have been showing them by
this time. But of course I don't blame him: few of the Eildons have
been men of mark--none in recent times except Lord Arthur--but they
have all been respectable men, whose lives would stand inspection; and
George is the equal of any of them in that respect. As a clergyman he
would have set a good example."
Hearing a person always pitied and spoken slightingly of does not
predispose any one to fall in love with that person. Miss Garscube's
feelings of this nature still lay very closely folded up in the bud,
and the early spring did not come at this time to develop them in the
shape of George Eildon; but Mr. Eildon was sufficiently foolish and
indiscreet to fall in love with her. Miss Adamson was the only one of
the three ladies cognizant of this state of affairs, but as her creed
was that no one had any right to make or meddle in a thing of this
kind, she saw as if she saw not, though very much interested. She saw
that Miss Garscube was as innocent of the knowledge that she had made
a conquest as it was possible to be, and she felt surprised that Lady
Arthur's sight was not sharper. But Lady Arthur was--or at least had
been--a woman of the world, and the idea of a penniless man allowing
himself to fall in love seriously with a penniless girl in actual
life could not find admission into her mind: if she had been writing
a ballad it would have been different; indeed, if you had only known
Lady Arthur through her poetry, you might have believed her to be a
very, romantic, sentimental, unworldly person, for she really was all
that--on paper.
Mr. Eildon was very frequently in the studio where Miss Adamson and
her pupil worked, and he was always ready to accompany them in their
excursions, and, Lady Arthur said, "really made himself very useful."
It has been said that John and Thomas both approved of her ladyship's
summer expeditions in search of the picturesque, or whatever else she
might take it into her head to look for; and when she issued orders
for a day among the hills in a certain month of August, which had been
a specially fine month in point of weather, every one was pleased.
But John and Thomas found it nearly as hard work climbing with the
luncheon-basket in the heat of the midsummer sun as it was when they
climbed to the same elevation in midwinter; only they did not slip
back so fast, nor did they feel that they were art and part in a
"daftlike" thing.
"Here," said Lady Arthur, raising her glass to her lips--"here is to
the memory of the Romans, on whose dust we are resting."
"Amen!" said Mr. Eildon; "but I am afraid you don't find their dust a
very soft resting-place: they were always a hard people, the Romans."
"They were a people I admire," said Lady Arthur. "If they had not been
called away by bad news from home, if they had been able to stay, our
civilization might have been a much older thing than it is.--What do
_you_ think, John?" she said, addressing her faithful servitor. "Less
than a thousand years ago all that stretch of country that we see so
richly cultivated and studded with cozy farm-houses was brushwood
and swamp, with a handful of savage inhabitants living in wigwams and
dressing in skins."
"It may be so," said John--"no doubt yer leddyship kens best--but I
have this to say: if they were savages they had the makin' o' men in
them. Naebody'll gar me believe that the stock yer leddyship and me
cam o' was na a capital gude stock."
"All right, John," said Mr. Eildon, "if you include me."
"It was a long time to take, surely," said Alice--"a thousand years to
bring the country from brushwood and swamp to corn and burns confined
to their beds,"
"Nature is never in a hurry, Alice," replied Lady Arthur.
"But she is always busy in a wonderfully quiet way," said Miss
Adamson. "Whenever man begins to work he makes a noise, but no one
hears the corn grow or the leaves burst their sheaths: even the clouds
move with noiseless grace."
"The clouds are what no one can understand yet, I suppose," said Mr.
Eildon, "but they don't always look as if butter wouldn't melt in
their mouths, as they are doing to-day. What do you say to thunder?"
"That is an exception: Nature does all her best work quietly."
"So does man," remarked George Eildon.
"Well, I dare say you are right, after all," said Miss Adamson, who
was sketching. "I wish I could paint in the glitter on the blade of
that reaping-machine down in the haugh there: see, it gleams every
time the sun's rays hit it. It is curious how Nature makes the most
of everything to heighten her picture, and yet never makes her bright
points too plentiful."
Just at that moment the sun's rays seized a small pane of glass in the
roof of a house two or three miles off down the valley, and it shot
out light and sparkles that dazzled the eye to look at.
"That is a fine effect," cried Alice: "it looks like the eye of an
archangel kindling up,"
"What a flight of fancy, Alice!" Lady Arthur said. "That
reaping-machine does its work very well, but it will be a long time
before it gathers a crust of poetry about it: stopping to clear
a stone out of its way is different from a lad and a lass on the
harvest-rig, the one stopping to take a thorn out of the finger of the
other."
"There are so many wonderful things," said Alice, "that one gets
always lost among them. How the clouds float is wonderful, and that
with the same earth below and the same heaven above, the heather
should be purple, and the corn yellow, and the ferns green, is
wonderful; but not so wonderful, I think, as that a man by the touch
of genius should have made every one interested in a field-laborer
taking a thorn out of the hand of another field-laborer. Catch your
poet, and he'll soon make the machine interesting."
"Get a thorn into your finger, Alice," said George Eildon, "and I'll
take it out if it is so interesting."
"You could not make it interesting," said she.
"Just try," he said.
"But trying won't do. You know as well as I that there are things no
trying will ever do. I am trying to paint, for instance, and in time I
shall copy pretty well, but I shall never do more."
"Hush, hush!" said Miss Adamson. "I'm often enough in despair myself,
and hearing you say that makes me worse. I rebel at having got just so
much brain and no more; but I suppose," she said with a sigh, "if
we make the best of what we have, it's all right, and if we had
well-balanced minds we should be contented."
"Would you like to stay here longer among the hills and the sheep?"
said Lady Arthur. "I have just remembered that I want silks for my
embroidery, and I have time to go to town: I can catch the afternoon
train. Do any of you care to go?"
"It is good to be here," said Mr. Eildon, "but as we can't stay
always, we may as well go now. I suppose."
And John, accustomed to sudden orders, hurried off to get his horses
put to the carriage.
Lady Arthur, upon the whole, approved of railways, but did not use
them much except upon occasion; and it was only by taking the train
she could reach town and be home for dinner on this day.
They reached the station in time, and no more. Mr. Eildon ran and got
tickets, and John was ordered to be at the station nearest Garscube
Hall to meet them when they returned.
Embroidery, being an art which high-born dames have practiced from the
earliest ages, was an employment that had always found favor in the
sight of Lady Arthur, and to which she turned when she wanted change
of occupation. She took a very short time to select her materials, and
they were back and seated in the railway carriage fully ten minutes
before the train started. They beguiled the time by looking about the
station: it was rather a different scene from that where they had been
in the fore part of the day.
"There's surely a mistake," said Mr. Eildon, pointing to a large
picture hanging on the wall of three sewing-machines worked by three
ladies, the one in the middle being Queen Elizabeth in her ruff, the
one on the right Queen Victoria in her widow's cap: the princess
of Wales was very busy at the third. "Is not that what is called an
anachronism, Miss Adamson? Are not sewing-machines a recent invention?
There were none in Elizabeth's time, I think?"
"There are people," said Lady Arthur, "who have neither common sense
nor a sense of the ridiculous."
"But they have a sense of what will pay," answered her nephew. "That
appeals to the heart of the nation--that is, to the masculine heart.
If Queen Bess had been handling a lancet, and Queen Vic pounding in a
mortar with a pestle, assisted by her daughter-in-law, the case would
have been different; but they are at useful womanly work, and the
machines will sell. They have fixed themselves in our memories
already: that's the object the advertiser had when he pressed the
passion of loyalty into his service."
"How will the strong-minded Tudor lady like to see herself revived in
that fashion, if she can see it?" asked Miss Garscube.
"She'll like it well, judging by myself," said George: "that's true
fame. I should be content to sit cross-legged on a board, stitching
pulpit-robes, in a picture, if I were sure it would be hung up three
hundred years after this at all the balloon-stations and have the then
Miss Garscubes making remarks about me."
"They might not make very complimentary remarks, perhaps," said Alice.
"If they thought of me at all I should be satisfied," said he.
"Couldn't you invent an iron bed, then?" said Miss Adamson, looking at
a representation of these articles hanging alongside the three royal
ladies. "Perhaps they'll last three hundred years, and if you could
bind yourself up with the idea of sweet repose--"
"They won't last three hundred years," said Lady Arthur--"cheap and
nasty, new-fangled things!"
"They maybe cheap and nasty," said George, "but new-fangled they are
not: they must be some thousands of years old. I am afraid, my dear
aunt, you don't read your Bible."
"Don't drag the Bible in among your nonsense. What has it to do with
iron beds?" said Lady Arthur.
"If you look into Deuteronomy, third chapter and eleventh verse,"
said he "you'll find that Og, king of Bashar used an iron bed. It is
probably in existence yet, and it must be quite old enough to make it
worth your while to look after it: perhaps Mr. Cook would personally
conduct you, or if not I should be glad to be your escort."
"Thank you," she said: "when I go in search of Og's bed I'll take you
with me."
"You could not do better: I have the scent of a sleuth-hound for
antiquities."
As they were speaking a man came and hung up beside the queens and
the iron beds a big white board on which were printed in large black
letters the words, "My Mother and I"--nothing more.
"What _can_ the meaning of that be?" asked Lady Arthur.
"To make you ask the meaning of it," said Mr. Eildon. "I who am
skilled in these matters have no doubt that it is the herald of some
soothing syrup for the human race under the trials of teething." He
was standing at the carriage-door till the train would start, and he
stood aside to let a young lady and a boy in deep mourning enter. The
pair were hardly seated when the girl's eye fell on the great white
board and its announcement. She bent her head and hid her face in her
handkerchief: it was not difficult to guess that she had very recently
parted with her mother for ever, and the words on the board were more
than she could stand unmoved.
Miss Adamson too had been thinking of her mother, the hard-working
woman who had toiled in her little shop to support her sickly husband
and educate her daughter--the kindly patient face, the hands that had
never spared themselves, the footsteps that had plodded so incessantly
to and fro. The all that had been gone so long came back to her, and
she felt almost the pang of first separation, when it seemed as if the
end of her life had been extinguished and the motive-power for work
had gone. But she carried her mother in her heart: with her it was
still "my mother and I."
Lady Arthur did not think of her mother: she had lost her early,
and besides, her thoughts and feelings had been all absorbed by her
husband.
Alice Garscube had never known her mother, and as she looked gravely
at the girl who was crying behind her handkerchief, she envied
her--she had known her mother.
As for Mr. Eildon, he had none but bright and happy thoughts connected
with his mother. It was true, she was a widow, but she was a kind and
stately lady, round whom her family moved as round a sun and centre,
giving light and heat and all good cheer; he could afford to joke
about "my mother and I."
What a vast deal of varied emotion these words must have stirred in
the multitudes of travelers coming and going in all directions!
In jumping into the carriage when the last bell rang, Mr. Eildon
missed his footing and fell back, with no greater injury, fortunately,
than grazing the skin, of his hand.
"Is it much hurt?" Lady Arthur asked.
He held it up and said, "'Who ran to help me when I fell?'"
"The guard," said Miss Garscube.
"'Who kissed the place to make it well?'" he continued.
"You might have been killed," said Miss Adamson.
"That would not have been a pretty story to tell," he said. "I shall
need to wait till I get home for the means of cure: 'my mother and I'
will manage it. You're not of a pitiful nature, Miss Garscube."
"I keep my pity for a pitiful occasion," she said.
"If you had grazed your hand, I would have applied the prescribed
cure."
"Well, but I'm very glad I have not grazed my hand,"
"So am I," he said.
"Let me see it," she said. He held it out. "Would something not need
to be done for it?" she asked.
"Yes. Is it interesting--as interesting as the thorn?"
"It is nothing," said Lady Arthur: "a little lukewarm water is all
that it needs;" and she thought, "That lad will never do anything
either for himself or to add to the prestige of the family. I hope his
cousins have more ability."
IV.
But what these cousins were to turn out no one knew. They had that
rank which gives a man what is equivalent to a start of half a
lifetime over his fellows, and they promised well; but they were only
boys as yet, and Nature puts forth many a choice blossom and bud that
never comes to maturity, or, meeting with blight or canker on the way,
turns out poor fruit. The eldest, a lad in his teens, was traveling
on the Continent with a tutor: the second, a boy who had been always
delicate, was at home on account of his health. George Eildon was
intimate with both, and loved them with a love as true as that he bore
to Alice Garscube: it never occurred to him that they had come into
the world to keep him out of his inheritance. He would have laughed at
such an idea. Many people would have said that he was laughing on
the wrong side of his mouth: the worldly never can understand the
unworldly.
Mr. Eildon gave Miss Garscube credit for being at least as unworldly
as himself: he believed thoroughly in her genuineness, her fresh,
unspotted nature; and, the wish being very strong, he believed that
she had a kindness for him.
When he and his hand got home he found it quite able to write her
a letter, or rather not so much a letter as a burst of enthusiastic
aspiration, asking her to marry him.
She was startled; and never having decided on anything in her life,
she carried this letter direct to Lady Arthur.
"Here's a thing," she said, "that I don't know what to think of."
"What kind of thing, Alice?"
"A letter."
"Who is it from?"
"Mr. Eildon."
"Indeed! I should not think a letter from him would be a complicated
affair or difficult to understand."
"Neither is it: perhaps you would read it?"
"Certainly, if you wish it." When she had read the document she said,
"Well I never gave George credit for much wisdom, but I did not think
he was foolish enough for a thing like this; and I never suspected it.
Are you in love too?" and Lady Arthur laughed heartily: it seemed to
strike her in a comic light.
"No. I never thought of it or of him either," Alice said, feeling
queer and uncomfortable.
"Then that simplifies matters. I always thought George's only chance
in life was to marry a wealthy woman, and how many good, accomplished
women there are, positively made of money, who would give anything to
marry into our family!"
"Are there?" said Alice.
"To be sure there are. Only the other day I read in a newspaper that
people are all so rich now money is no distinction: rank is, however.
You can't make a lawyer or a shipowner or an ironmaster into a peer of
several hundred years' descent."
"No, you can't," said Alice; "but Mr. Eildon is not a peer, you know."
"No, but he is the grandson of one duke and the nephew of another; and
if he could work for it he might have a peerage of his own, or if he
had great wealth he would probably get one. For my own part, I don't
count much on rank or wealth" (she believed this), "but they are
privileges people have no right to throw away."
"Not even if they don't care for them?" asked Alice,
"No: whatever you have it is your duty to care for and make the best
of."
"Then, what am I to say to Mr. Eildon?"
"Tell him it is absurd; and whatever you say, put it strongly, that
there may be no more of it. Why, he must know that you would be
beggars."
Acting up to her instructions, Alice wrote thus to Mr. Eildon:
"DEAR MR. EILDON: Your letter surprised me. Lady Arthur says
it is absurd; besides, I don't care for you a bit. I don't
mean that I dislike you, for I don't dislike any one. We
wonder you could be so foolish, and Lady Arthur says there
must be no more of it; and she is right. I hope you will
forget all about this, and believe me to be your true friend,
"ALICE GARSCUBE.
"P.S. Lady Arthur says you haven't got anything to live on;
but if you had all the wealth in the world, it wouldn't make
any difference.
"A. G."
This note fell into George Eildon's mind like molten lead dropped on
living flesh. "She is not what I took her to be," he said to
himself, "or she never could have written that, even at Lady Arthur's
suggestion; and Lady Arthur ought to have known better."
And she certainly ought to have known better; yet he might have found
some excuse for Alice if he had allowed himself to think, but he did
not: he only felt, and felt very keenly.
In saying that Mr. Eildon and Miss Garscube were penniless, the remark
is not to be taken literally, for he had an income of fifteen hundred
pounds, and she had five hundred a year of her own; but in the eyes of
people moving in ducal circles matrimony on two thousand pounds seems
as improvident a step as that of the Irishman who marries when he has
accumulated sixpence appears to ordinary beings.
Mr. Eildon spent six weeks at a shooting-box belonging to his uncle
the duke, after which he went to London, where he got a post under
government--a place which was by no means a sinecure, but where there
was plenty of work not over-paid. Before leaving he called for a few
minutes at Garscube Hall to say good-bye, and that was all they saw of
him.
Alice missed him: a very good thing, of which she had been as
unconscious as she was of the atmosphere, had been withdrawn from her
life. George's letter had nailed him to her memory: she thought of him
very often, and that is a dangerous thing for a young lady to do if
she means to keep herself entirely fancy free. She wondered if his
work was very hard work, and if he was shut in an office all day; she
did not think he was made for that; it seemed as unnatural as putting
a bird into a cage. She made some remark of this kind to Lady Arthur,
who laughed and said, "Oh, George won't kill himself with hard work."
From that time forth Alice was shy of speaking of him to his aunt.
But she had kept his letter, and indulged herself with a reading of it
occasionally; and every time she read it she seemed to understand it
better. It was a mystery to her how she had been so intensely stupid
as not to understand it at first. And when she found a copy of her own
answer to it among her papers--one she had thrown aside on account of
a big blot--she wondered if it was possible she had sent such a thing,
and tears of shame and regret stood in her eyes. "How frightfully
blind I was!" she said to herself. But there was no help for it: the
thing was done, and could not be undone. She had grown in wisdom since
then, but most people reach wisdom through ignorance and folly.
In these circumstances she found Miss Adamson a very valuable friend.
Miss Adamson had never shared Lady Arthur's low estimate of Mr.
Eildon: she liked his sweet, unworldly nature, and she had a regard
for him as having aims both lower and higher than a "career." That
he should love Miss Garscube seemed to her natural and good, and
that happiness might be possible even to a duke's grandson on such a
pittance as two thousand pounds a year was an article of her belief:
she pitied people who go through life sacrificing the substance for
the shadow. Yes, Miss Garscube could speak of Mr. Eildon to her friend
and teacher, and be sure of some remark that gave her comfort.
V.
A year sped round again, and they heard of Mr. Eildon being in
Scotland at the shooting, and as he was not very far off, they
expected to see him any time. But it was getting to the end of
September, and he had paid no visit, when one day, as the ladies were
sitting at luncheon, he came in, looking very white and agitated. They
were all startled: Miss Garscube grew white also, and felt herself
trembling. Lady Arthur rose hurriedly and said, "What is it, George?
what's the matter?"
"A strange thing has happened," he said. "I only heard of it a
few minutes ago: a man rode after me with the telegram. My cousin
George--Lord Eildon--has fallen down a crevasse in the Alps and been
killed. Only a week ago I parted with him full of life and spirit,
and I loved him as if he had been my brother;" and he bent his head to
hide tears.
They were all silent for some moments: then in a low voice Lady Arthur
said, "I am sorry for his father."
"I am sorry for them all," George said. "It is terrible;" then after a
little he said, "You'll excuse my leaving you: I am going to Eildon at
once: I may be of some service to them. I don't know how Frank will be
able to bear this."
After he had gone away Alice felt how thoroughly she was nothing to
him now: there had been no sign in his manner that he had ever thought
of her at all, more than of any other ordinary acquaintance. If he had
only looked to her for the least sympathy! But he had not. "If he only
knew how well I understand him now!" she thought.
"It is a dreadful accident," said Lady Arthur, "and I am sorry for the
duke and duchess." She said this in a calm way. It had always been her
opinion that Lord Arthur's relations had never seen the magnitude of
_her_ loss, and this feeling lowered the temperature of her sympathy,
as a wind blowing over ice cools the atmosphere. "I think George's
grief very genuine," she continued: "at the same time he can't but see
that there is only that delicate lad's life, that has been hanging so
long by a hair, between him and the title."
"Lady Arthur!" exclaimed Alice in warm tones.
"I know, my dear, you are thinking me very unfeeling, but I am not: I
am only a good deal older than you. George's position to-day is very
different from what it was a year ago. If he were to write to you
again, I would advise another kind of answer."
"He'll never write again," said Alice in a tone which struck the ear
of Lady Arthur, so that when the young girl left the room she turned
to Miss Adamson and said, "Do you think she really cares about him?"
"She has not made me her confidante," that lady answered, "but my own
opinion is that she does care a good deal for Mr. Eildon."
"Do you really think so?" exclaimed Lady Arthur. "She said she did not
at the time, and I thought then, and think still, that it would not
signify much to George whom he married; and you know he would be so
much the better for money. But if he is to be his uncle's successor,
that alters the case entirely. I'll go to Eildon myself, and bring him
back with me."
Lady Arthur went to Eildon and mingled her tears with those of the
stricken parents, whose grief might have moved a very much harder
heart than hers. But they did not see the state of their only
remaining son as Lady Arthur and others saw it; for, while it was
commonly thought that he would hardly reach maturity, they were
sanguine enough to believe that he was outgrowing the delicacy of his
childhood.
Lady Arthur asked George to return with her to Garscube Hall, but
he said he could not possibly do so. Then she said she had told Miss
Adamson and Alice that she would bring him with her, and they would be
disappointed.
"Tell them," he said, "that I have very little time to spare, and I
must spend it with Frank, when I am sure they will excuse me."
They excused him, but they were not the less disappointed, all the
three ladies; indeed, they were so much disappointed that they did not
speak of the thing to each other, as people chatter over and thereby
evaporate a trifling defeat of hopes.
Mr. Eildon left his cousin only to visit his mother and sisters for a
day, and then returned to London; from which it appeared that he was
not excessively anxious to visit Garscube Hall.
But everything there went on as usual. The ladies painted, they went
excursions, they wrote ballads; still, there was a sense of something
being amiss--the heart of their lives seemed dull in its beat.
The more Lady Arthur thought of having sent away such a matrimonial
prize from her house, the more she was chagrined; the more Miss
Garscube tried not to think of Mr. Eildon, the more her thoughts would
run upon him; and even Miss Adamson, who had nothing to regret or
reproach herself with, could not help being influenced by the change
of atmosphere.
Lady Arthur's thoughts issued in the resolution to re-enter society
once more; which resolution she imparted to Miss Adamson in the first
instance by saying that she meant to go to London next season.
"Then our plan of life here will be quite broken up," said Miss A.
"Yes, for a time."
"I thought you disliked society?"
"I don't much like it: it is on account of Alice I am going. I may
just as well tell you: I want to bring her and George together again
if possible."
"Will she go if she knows that is your end?"
"She need not know."
"It is not a very dignified course," Miss Adamson said.
"No, and if it were an ordinary case I should not think of it."
"But you think him a very ordinary man?"
"A duke is different. Consider what an amount of influence Alice
would have, and how well she would use it; and he may marry a vain,
frivolous, senseless woman, incapable of a good action. Indeed, most
likely, for such people are sure to hunt him."
"I would not join in the hunt," said Miss Adamson. "If he is the man
you suppose him to be, the wound his self-love got will have killed
his love; and if he is the man I think, no hunters will make him their
prey. A small man would know instantly why you went to London, and
enjoy his triumph."
"I don't think George would: he is too simple; but if I did not think
it a positive duty, I would not go. However, we shall see: I don't
think of going before the middle of January."
Positive duties can be like the animals that change color with what
they feed on.
VI.
When the middle of January came, Lady Arthur, who had never had an
illness in her life, was measuring her strength in a hand-to-hand
struggle with fever. The water was blamed, the drainage was blamed,
various things were blamed. Whether it came in the water or out of the
drains, gastric fever had arrived at Garscube Hall: the gardener took
it, his daughter took it, also Thomas the footman, and others of the
inhabitants, as well as Lady Arthur. The doctor of the place came and
lived In the house; besides that, two of the chief medical men from
town paid almost daily visits. Bottles of the water supplied to the
hall were sent to eminent chemists for analysis: the drainage was
thoroughly examined, and men were set to make it as perfect and
innocuous as it is in the nature of drainage to be.
Lady Arthur wished Miss Adamson and Alice to leave the place for a
time, but they would not do so: neither of them was afraid, and they
stayed and nursed her ladyship well, relieving each other as it was
necessary.
At one point of her illness Lady Arthur said to Miss Adamson, who was
alone with her, "Well, I never counted on this. Our family have all
had a trick of living to extreme old age, never dying till they could
not help it; but it will be grand to get away so soon."
Miss Adamson looked at her. "Yes," she said, "it's a poor thing,
life, after the glory of it is gone, and I have always had an intense
curiosity to see what is beyond. I never could see the sense of making
a great ado to keep people alive after they are fifty. Don't look
surprised. How are the rest of the people that are ill?" She often
asked for them, and expressed great satisfaction when told they were
recovering. "It will be all right," she said, "if I am the only death
in the place; but there is one thing I want you to do. Send off a
telegram to George Eildon and tell him I want to see him immediately:
a dying person can say what a living one can't, and I'll make it all
right between Alice and him before I go."
Miss Adamson despatched the telegram to Mr. Eildon, knowing that she
could not refuse to do Lady Arthur's bidding at such a time, although
her feeling was against it. The answer came: Mr. Eildon had just
sailed for Australia.
When Lady Arthur heard this she said, "I'll write to him." When she
had finished writing she said, "You'll send this to him whenever you
get his address. I wish we could have sent it off at once, for it will
be provoking if I don't die, after all; and I positively begin to feel
as if that were not going to be my luck at this time."
Although she spoke in this way, Miss Adamson knew it was not from
foolish irreverence. She recovered, and all who had had the fever
recovered, which was remarkable, for in other places it had been very
fatal.
With Lady Arthur's returning strength things at the hall wore into
their old channels again. When it was considered safe many visits
of congratulation were paid, and among others who came were George
Eildon's mother and some of his sisters. They were constantly having
letters from George: he had gone off very suddenly, and it was not
certain when he might return.
Alice heard of George Eildon with interest, but not with the vital
interest she had felt in him for a time: that had worn away. She had
done her best to this end by keeping herself always occupied, and many
things had happened in the interval; besides, she had grown a woman,
with all the good sense and right feeling belonging to womanhood, and
she would have been ashamed to cherish a love for one who had entirely
forgotten her. She dismissed her childish letter, which had given her
so much vexation, from her memory, feeling sure that George Eildon had
also forgotten it long ago. She did not know of the letter Lady Arthur
had written when she believed herself to be dying, and it was well she
did not.
VII.
Every one who watched the sun rise on New Year's morning, 1875, will
bear witness to the beauty of the sight. Snow had been lying all over
the country for some time, and a fortnight of frost had made it hard
and dry and crisp. The streams must have felt very queer when they
were dropping off into the mesmeric trance, and found themselves
stopped in the very act of running, their supple limbs growing stiff
and heavy and their voices dying in their throats, till they were
thrown into a deep sleep, and a strange white, still, glassy beauty
stole over them by the magic power of frost. The sun got up rather
late, no doubt--between eight and nine o'clock--probably saying to
himself, "These people think I have lost my power--that the Ice King
has it all his own way. I'll let them see: I'll make his glory pale
before mine."
Lady Arthur was standing at her window when she saw him look over the
shoulder of a hill and throw a brilliant deep gold light all over the
land covered with snow as with a garment, and every minute crystal
glittered as if multitudes of little eyes had suddenly opened and were
gleaming and winking under his gaze. To say that the bosom of Mother
Earth was crusted with diamonds is to give the impression of dullness
unless each diamond could be endowed with life and emotion. Then he
threw out shaft after shaft of color--scarlet and crimson and blue and
amber and green--which gleamed along the heavens, kindling the cold
white snow below them into a passion of beauty: the colors floated and
changed form, and mingled and died away. Then the sun drew his thick
winter clouds about him, disappeared, and was no more seen that day.
He had vindicated his majesty.
Lady Arthur thought it was going to be a bright winter day, and at
breakfast she proposed a drive to Cockhoolet Castle, an old place
within driving distance to which she paid periodical visits: they
would take luncheon on the battlements and see all over the country,
which must be looking grand in its bridal attire.
John was called in and asked if he did not think it was going to be
a fine day. He glanced through the windows at the dark,
suspicious-looking clouds and said, "Weel, my leddy, I'll no uphaud
it." This was the answer of a courtier and an oracle, not to mention
a Scotchman. It did not contradict Lady Arthur, it did not commit
himself, and it was cautious.
"I think it will be a fine day of its kind," said the lady, "and we'll
drive to Cockhoolet. Have the carriage ready at ten."
"If we dinna wun a' the gate, we can but turn again," John thought as
he retired to execute his orders.
"It is not looking so well as it did in the morning," said Miss
Adamson as they entered the carriage, "but if we have an adventure we
shall be the better for it."
"We shall have no such luck," said Lady Arthur: "what ever happens out
of the usual way now? There used to be glorious snowstorms long ago,
but the winters have lost their rigor, and there are no such long
summer days now as there were when I was young. Neither persons nor
things have that spirit in them they used to have;" and she smiled,
catching in thought the fact that to the young the world is still as
fresh and fair as it has appeared to all the successive generations it
has carried on its surface.
"This is a wiselike expedition," said Thomas to John.
"Ay," said John, "I'm mista'en if this is no a day that'll be heard
tell o' yet;" and they mounted to their respective places and started.
The sky was very grim and the wind had been gradually rising. The
three ladies sat each in her corner, saying little, and feeling that
this drive was certainly a means to an end, and not an end in itself.
Their pace had not been very quick from the first, but it became
gradually slower, and the hard dry snow was drifting past the windows
in clouds. At last they came to a stand altogether, and John appeared
at the window like a white column and said, "My leddy, we'll hae to
stop here."
"Stop! why?"
"Because it's impossible to wun ony farrer."
"Nonsense! There's no such word as impossible."
"The beasts might maybe get through, but they wad leave the carriage
ahint them."
"Let me out to look about," said Lady Arthur.
"Ye had better bide where ye are," said John: "there's naething to be
seen, and ye wad but get yersel' a' snaw. We might try to gang back
the road we cam."
"Decidedly not," said Lady Arthur, whose spirits were rising to the
occasion: "we can't be far from Cockhoolet here?"
"Between twa and three mile," said John dryly.
"We'll get out and walk," said her ladyship, looking at the other
ladies.
"Wi' the wind in yer teeth, and sinking up to yer cuits at every step?
Ye wad either be blawn ower the muir like a feather, or planted amang
the snaw like Lot's wife. I might maybe force my way through, but I
canna leave the horses," said John.
Lady Arthur was fully more concerned for her horses than herself: she
said, "Take out the horses and go to Cockhoolet: leave them to rest
and feed, and tell Mr. Ormiston to send for us. We'll sit here very
comfortably till you come back: it won't take you long. Thomas will go
too, but give us in the luncheon-basket first."
The men, being refreshed from the basket, set off with the horses,
leaving the ladies getting rapidly snowed up in the carriage. As the
wind rose almost to a gale, Lady Arthur remarked "that it was at least
better to be stuck firm among the snow than to be blown away."
It is a grand thing to suffer in a great cause, but if you suffer
merely because you have done a "daftlike" thing, the satisfaction is
not the same.
The snow sifted into the carriage at the minutest crevice like fine
dust, and, melting, became cold, clammy and uncomfortable. To be set
down in a glass case on a moor without shelter in the height of a
snowstorm has only one recommendation: it is an uncommon situation,
a novel experience. The ladies--at least Lady Arthur--must, one would
think, have felt foolish, but it is a chief qualification in a leader
that he never acknowledges that he is in the wrong: if he once does
that, his prestige is gone.
The first hour of isolation wore away pretty well, owing to the
novelty of the the position; the second also, being devoted to
luncheon; the third dragged a good deal; but when it came to the
fourth; with light beginning to fail and no word of rescue, matters
looked serious. The cold was becoming intense--a chill, damp cold that
struck every living thing through and through. What could be keeping
the men? Had they lost their way, or what could possibly have
happened?
"This is something like an adventure," said Lady Arthur cheerily.
"It might pass for one," said Miss Adamson, "if we could see our way
out of it. I wonder if we shall have to sit here all night?"
"If we do," said Lady Arthur, "we can have no hope of wild beasts
scenting us out or of being attacked by banditti."
"Nor of any enamored gentleman coming to the rescue," said Miss
Adamson: "it will end tamely enough. I remember reading a story of
travel among savages, in which at the close of the monthly instalment
the travelers were left buried alive except their heads, which were
above ground, but set on fire. That was a very striking situation, yet
it all came right; so there is hope for us, I think."
"Oh, don't make me laugh," said Alice: "I really can't laugh, I am so
stiff with cold."
"It's a fine discipline to our patience to sit here," said Lady
Arthur. "If I had thought we should have to wait so long, I would have
tried what I could do while it was light."
VIII.
At length they heard a movement among the snow, and voices, and
immediately a light appeared at the window, shining through the
snow-blind, which was swept down by an arm and the carriage-door
opened.
"Are you all safe?" were the first words they heard.
"In the name of wonder, George, how are you here? Where are John and
Thomas?" cried Lady Arthur.
"I'll tell you all about it after," said George Eildon: "the thing is
to get you out of this scrape. I have a farm-cart and pair, and two
men to help me: you must just put up with roughing it a little."
"Oh, I am so thankful!" said Alice.
The ladies were assisted out of the carriage into the cart, and
settled among plenty of straw and rugs and shawls, with their backs to
the blast. Mr. Eildon shut the door of the carriage, which was left
to its fate, and then got in and sat at the feet of the ladies. Mr.
Ormiston's servant mounted the trace-horse and Thomas sat on the front
of the cart, and the cavalcade started to toil through the snow.
"Do tell us, George, how you are here. I thought it was only heroes of
romance that turned up when their services were desperately needed."
"There have been a good many heroes of romance to-day," said Mr.
Eildon. "The railways have been blocked in all directions; three
trains with about six hundred passengers have been brought to a stand
at the Drumhead Station near this; many of the people have been half
frozen and sick and fainting. I was in the train going south, and very
anxious to get on, but it was impossible. I got to Cockhoolet with a
number of exhausted travelers just as your man arrived, and we came
off as soon as we could to look for you. You have stood the thing much
better than many of my fellow-travelers."
"Indeed!" said Lady Arthur, "and have all the poor people got housed?"
"Most of them are at the station-house and various farm-houses. Mr.
Forester, Mr. Ormiston's son-in-law, started to bring up the last of
them just as I started for you."
"Well, I must say I have enjoyed it," Lady Arthur said, "but how are
we to get home to-night?"
"You'll not get home to-night: you'll have to stay at Cockhoolet, and
be glad if you can get home to-morrow."
"And where have you come from, and where are you going to?" she asked.
"I came from London--I have only been a week home from Australia--and
I am on my way to Eildon. But here we are."
And the hospitable doors of Cockhoolet were thrown wide, sending out a
glow of light to welcome the belated travelers.
Mrs. Ormiston and her daughter, Mrs. Forester--who with her husband
was on a visit at Cockhoolet--received them and took them to
rooms where fires made what seemed tropical heat compared with the
atmosphere in the glass case on the moor.
Miss Garscube was able for nothing but to go to bed, and Miss Adamson
stayed with her in the room called Queen Mary's, being the room that
unfortunate lady occupied when she visited Cockhoolet.
On this night the castle must have thought old times had come back
again, there was such a large and miscellaneous company beneath its
roof. But where were the knights in armor, the courtiers in velvet and
satin, the boars' heads, the venison pasties, the wassail-bowls? Where
were the stately dames in stiff brocade, the shaven priests, the
fool in motley, the vassals, the yeomen in hodden gray and broad blue
bonnet? Not there, certainly.
No doubt, Lady Arthur Eildon was a direct descendant of one of "the
queen's Maries," but in her rusty black gown, her old black bonnet set
awry on her head, her red face, her stout figure, made stouter by a
sealskin jacket, you could not at a glance see the connection. The
house of Eildon was pretty closely connected with the house of Stuart,
but George Eildon in his tweed suit, waterproof and wideawake looked
neither royal nor romantic. We may be almost sure that there was a
fool or fools in the company, but they did not wear motley. In short,
as yet it is difficult to connect the idea of romance with railway
rugs, waterproofs, India-rubbers and wide-awakes and the steam of tea
and coffee: three hundred years hence perhaps it may be possible.
Who knows? But for all that, romances go on, we may be sure, whether
people are clad in velvet or hodden gray.
Lady Arthur was framing a romance--a romance which had as much of the
purely worldly in it as a romance can hold. She found that George was
on his way to see his cousin, Lord Eildon, who within two days had
had a severe access of illness. It seemed to her a matter of certainty
that George would be duke of Eildon some day. If she had only had
the capacity to have despatched that letter she had written when she
believed she was dying, after him to Australia! Could she send it to
him yet? She hesitated: she could hardly bring herself to compromise
the dignity of Alice, and her own. She had a short talk with him
before they separated for the night.
"I think you should go home by railway to-morrow," he said. "It is
blowing fresh now, and the trains will all be running to-morrow. I am
sorry I have to go by the first in the morning, so I shall probably
not see you then,"
"I don't know," she said: "it is a question if Alice will be able to
travel at all to-morrow."
"She is not ill, is she?" he said. "It is only a little fatigue from
exposure that ails her, isn't it?"
"But it may have bad consequences," said Lady Arthur: "one never can
tell;" and she spoke in an injured way, for George's tones were not
encouraging. "And John, my coachman--I haven't seen him--he ought to
have been at hand at least: if I could depend on any one, I thought it
was him."
"Why, he was overcome in the drift to-day: your other man had to leave
him behind and ride forward for help. It was digging him out of the
snow that kept us so long in getting to you. He has been in bed ever
since, but he is getting round quite well."
"I ought to have known that sooner," she said.
"I did not want to alarm you unnecessarily."
"I must go and see him;" and she held out her hand to say good-night.
"But you'll come to Garscube Hall soon: I shall be anxious to hear
what you think of Frank. When will you come?"
"I'll write," he said.
Lady Arthur felt that opportunity was slipping from her, and she grew
desperate. "Speaking of writing," she said, "I wrote to you when I
had the fever last year and thought I was dying: would you like to see
that letter?"
"No," he said: "I prefer you living."
"Have you no curiosity? People can say things dying that they couldn't
say living, perhaps."
"Well, they have no business to do so," he said. "It is taking an
unfair advantage, which a generous nature never does; besides, it is
more solemn to live than die."
"Then you don't want the letter?"
"Oh yes, if you like."
"Very well: I'll think of it. Can you show me the way to John's place
of refuge?"
They found John sitting up in bed, and Mrs, Ormiston ministering to
him: the remains of a fowl were on a plate beside him, and he was
lifting a glass of something comfortable to his lips.
"I never knew of this, John," said his mistress, "till just a few
minutes ago. This is sad."
"Weel, it doesna look very sad," said John, eying the plate and the
glass. "Yer leddyship and me hae gang mony a daftlike road, but I
think we fairly catched it the day."
"I don't know how we can be grateful enough to you, Mrs. Ormiston,"
said Lady Arthur, turning to their hostess.
"Well, you know we could hardly be so churlish as to shut our doors on
storm-stayed travelers: we are very glad that we had it in our power
to help them a little."
"It's by ordinar' gude quarters," said John: "I've railly enjoyed that
hen. Is 't no time yer leddyship was in yer bed, after siccan a day's
wark?"
"We'll take the hint, John," said Lady Arthur; and in a little while
longer most of Mr. Ormiston's unexpected guests had lost sight of the
day's adventure in sleep.
IX.
By dawn of the winter's morning all the company, the railway pilgrims,
were astir again--not to visit a shrine, or attend a tournament, or to
go hunting or hawking, or to engage in a foray or rieving expedition,
as guests of former days at the castle may have done, but quietly to
make their way to the station as the different trains came up, the
fresh wind having done more to clear the way than the army of men
that had been set to work with pickaxe and shovel. But although the
railways and the tweeds and the India-rubbers were modern, the castle
and the snow and the hospitality were all very old-fashioned--the snow
as old as that lying round the North Pole, and as unadulterated; the
hospitality old as when Eve entertained Raphael in Eden, and as true,
blessing those that give and those that take.
Mr. Eildon left with the first party that went to the station; Lady
Arthur and the young ladies went away at midday; John was left to
take care of himself and his carriage till both should be more fit for
traveling.
Of the three ladies, Alice had suffered most from the severe cold, and
it was some time before she entirely recovered from the effects of it.
Lady Arthur convinced herself that it was not merely the effects
of cold she was suffering from, and talked the case over with Miss
Adamson, but that lady stoutly rejected Lady Arthur's idea. "Miss
Garscube has got over that long ago, and so has Mr. Eildon," she said
dryly. "Alice has far more sense than to nurse a feeling for a man
evidently indifferent to her." These two ladies had exchanged opinions
exactly. George Eildon had only called once, and on a day when they
were all from home: he had written several times to his aunt regarding
Lord Eildon's health, and Lady Arthur had written to him and had told
him her anxiety about the health of Alice. He expressed sympathy and
concern, as his mother might have done, but Lady Arthur would not
allow herself to see that the case was desperate.
She had a note from her sister-in-law, Lady George, who said "that she
had just been at Eildon, and in her opinion Frank was going, but his
parents either can't or won't see this, or George either. It is a sad
case--so young a man and with such prospects--but the world abounds in
sad things," etc., etc. But sad as the world is, it is shrewd with a
wisdom of its own, and it hardly believed in the grief of Lady George
for an event which would place her own son in a position of honor and
affluence. But many a time George Eildon recoiled from the people who
did not conceal their opinion that he might not be broken-hearted
at the death of his cousin. There is nothing that true, honorable,
unworldly natures shrink from more than having low, unworthy feelings
and motives attributed to them.
X.
Lady Arthur Eildon made up her mind. "I am supposed," she said to
herself, "to be eccentric: why not get the good of such a character?"
She enclosed her dying letter to her nephew, which was nothing less
than an appeal to him on behalf of Alice, assuring him of her belief
that Alice bitterly regretted the answer she had given his letter, and
that if she had it to do over again it would be very different. When
Lady Arthur did this she felt that she was not doing as she would be
done by, but the stake was too great not to try a last throw for it.
In an accompanying note she said, "I believe that the statements in
this letter still hold true. I blamed myself afterward for having
influenced Alice when she wrote to you, and now I have absolved my
conscience." (Lady Arthur put it thus, but she hardly succeeded
in making herself believe it was a case of conscience: she was too
sharp-witted. It is self-complacent stupidity that is morally small.)
"If this letter is of no interest to you, I am sure I am trusting it
to honorable hands."
She got an answer immediately. "I thank you," Mr. Eildon said, "for
your letters, ancient and modern: they are both in the fire, and so
far as I am concerned shall be as if they had never been."
It was in vain, then, all in vain, that she had humbled herself before
George Eildon. Not only had her scheme failed, but her pride suffered,
as your finger suffers when the point of it is shut by accident in the
hinge of a door. The pain was terrible. She forgot her conscience, how
she had dealt treacherously--for her good, as she believed, but still
treacherously--with Alice Garscube: she forgot everything but her
own pain, and those about her thought that decidedly she was very
eccentric at this time. She snubbed her people, she gave orders and
countermanded them, so that her servants did not know what to do or
leave undone, and they shook their heads among themselves and remarked
that the moon was at the full.
But of course the moon waned, and things calmed down a little. In the
next note she received from her sister-in-law, among other items
of news she was told that her nephew meant to visit her
shortly--"Probably," said his mother, "this week, but I think it will
only be a call. He says Lord Eildon is rather better, which has put us
all in good spirits," etc.
Now, Lady Arthur did not wish to see George Eildon at this time--not
that she could not keep a perfect and dignified composure in any
circumstances, but her pride was still in the hinge of the door--and
she went from home every day. Three days she had business in town: the
other days she drove to call on people living in the next county. As
she did not care for going about alone, she took Miss Adamson always
with her, but Alice only once or twice: she was hardly able for
extra fatigue every day. But Miss Garscube was recovering health and
spirits, and looks also, and when Lady Arthur left her behind she
thought, "Well, if George calls to-day, he'll see that he is not a
necessary of life at least." She felt very grateful that it was so,
and had no objections that George should see it.
He did see it, for he called that day, but he had not the least
feeling of mortification: he was unfeignedly glad to see Alice looking
so well, and he had never, he thought, seen her look better. After
they had spoken in the most quiet and friendly way for a little she
said, "And how is your cousin, Lord Eildon?"
"Nearly well: his constitution seems at last fairly to have taken
a turn in the right direction. The doctors say that not only is he
likely to live as long as any of us, but that the probability is he
will be a robust man yet."
"Oh, I am glad of it--I am heartily glad of it!"
"Why are you so very glad?"
"Because you are: it has made you very happy--you look so."
"I am excessively happy because you believe I am happy. Many people
don't: many people think I am disappointed. My own mother thinks so,
and yet she is a good woman. People will believe that you wish the
death of your dearest friend if he stands between you and material
good. It is horrible, and I have been courted and worshiped as the
rising sun;" and he laughed. "One can afford to laugh at it now, but
it was very sickening at the time. I can afford anything, Alice: I
believe I can even afford to marry, if you'll marry a hard-working man
instead of a duke."
"Oh, George," she said, "I have been so ashamed of that letter I
wrote."
"It was a wicked little letter," he said, "but I suppose it was the
truth at the time: say it is not true now."
"It is not true now," she repeated, "but I have not loved you very
dearly all the time; and if you had married I should have been very
happy if you had been happy. But oh," she said, and her eyes filled
with tears, "this is far better."
"You love me now?"
"Unutterably."
"I have loved you all the time, all the time. I should not have been
happy if I had heard of your marriage."
"Then how were you so cold and distant the day we stuck on the moor?"
"Because it was excessively cold weather: I was not going to warm
myself up to be frozen again. I have never been in delicate health,
but I can't stand heats and chills."
"I do believe you are not a bit wiser than I am. I hear the carriage:
that's Lady Arthur come back. How surprised she will be!"
"I am not so sure of that," George said. "I'll go and meet her."
When he appeared Lady Arthur shook hands tranquilly and said, "How do
you do?"
"Very well," he said. "I have been testing the value of certain
documents you sent me, and find they are worth their weight in gold."
She looked in his face.
"Alice is mine," he said, "and we are going to Bashan for our
wedding-tour. If you'll seize the opportunity of our escort, you may
hunt up Og's bed."
"Thank you," she said: "I fear I should be _de trop_."
"Not a bit; but even if you were a great nuisance, we are in the humor
to put up with anything."
"I'll think of it. I have never traveled in the character of a
nuisance yet--at least, so far as I know--and it would be a new
sensation: that is a great inducement."
Lady Arthur rushed to Miss Adamson's room with the news, and the
two ladies had first a cry and then a laugh over it. "Alice will be
duchess yet," said Lady Arthur: "that boy's life has hung so long by a
thread that he must be prepared to go, and he would be far better away
from the cares and trials of this world, I am sure;" which might be
the truth, but it was hard to grudge the boy his life.
Lady Arthur was in brilliant spirits at dinner that evening. "I
suppose you are going to live on love," she said.
"I am going to work for my living," said George.
"Very right," she said; "but, although I got better last year, I can't
live for ever, and when I'm gone Alice will have the Garscube estates:
I have always intended it."
"Madam," said George, "do you not know that the great lexicographer
has said in one of his admirable works, 'Let no man suffer his
felicity to depend upon the death of his aunt'?"
It is said that whenever a Liberal ministry comes in Mr. Eildon will
be offered the governorship of one of the colonies. Lady Arthur may
yet live to be astonished by his "career," and at least she is not
likely to regret her dying letter.
THE AUTHOR OF "BLINDPITS."
THE HOUSE ON THE BEACH.
"What is that black mass yonder, far up the beach, just at the edge of
the breakers?"
The fisherman to whom we put the question drew in his squid-line, hand
over hand, without turning his head, having given the same answer for
half a dozen years to summer tourists: "Wreck. Steamer. Creole."
"Were there many lives lost?"
"It's likely. This is the worst bit of coast in the country, The
Creole was a three-decker," looking at it reflectively, "Lot of good
timber there."
As we turned our field-glasses to the black lump hunched out of the
water, like a great sea-monster creeping up on the sand, we saw still
farther up the coast a small house perched on a headland, with a flag
flying in the gray mist, and pointed it out to the Jerseyman, who
nodded: "That there wooden shed is the United States signal station;"
adding, after a pause, "Life-saving service down stairs."
"Old Probabilities! The house he lives in!"
"Life-boats!"
Visions of the mysterious old prophet who utters his oracles through
the morning paper, of wrecks and storms, and of heroic men carrying
lines through the night to sinking ships, filled our brains.
Townspeople out for their summer holiday have keen appetites for the
romantic and extraordinary, and manufacture them (as sugar from beets)
out of the scantiest materials. We turned our backs on the fisherman
and his squid-line. The signal station and the hull of the lost vessel
were only a shed and timber to him. How can any man be alive to the
significance of a wreck and fluttering flag which he sees twenty times
a day? Noah, no doubt, after a year in the ark, came to look upon it
as so much gopher-wood, and appreciated it as a good job of joinery
rather than a divine symbol.
We believe, however, that our readers will find in the wrecked Creole
and the wooden shed, and the practical facts concerning them, matter
suggestive enough to hold them a little space. They fill a yet
unwritten page in the history of our government, and of great and
admirable work done by it, of which the nation at large has been
given but partial knowledge. Or, if we choose to look more deeply into
things, we may find in the old hulk and commonplace building hints as
significant of the Infinite Order and Power underlying all ordinary
things, and of our relations to it, as in the long-ago Deluge and the
ark riding over it.
The little wooden house stands upon a lonely stretch of coast in Ocean
county, New Jersey. Several miles of low barren marshes and sands gray
with poverty-grass on the north separate it from Manasquan Inlet and
the pine woods and scattered farm-houses which lie along its shore,
while half a mile below, on the south, is the head of Barnegat Bay,
a deep, narrow estuary which runs into and along the Jersey coast for
more than half its extent, leaving outside a strip of sandy beach,
never more than a mile wide. All kinds of sea fish and fowl take
refuge in this bay and the interminable reedy marshes, and for a few
weeks in the snipe-and duck-season sportsmen from New York find their
way to "Shattuck's" and the houses of other old water-dogs along the
bay. But during the rest of the year the wooden shed and its occupants
are left to the companionship of the sea and the winds.
The little building (with a gigantic "No. 10" whitewashed outside)
stands close to the breakers, just above high-water mark in winter. It
is divided into two large rooms, upper and lower, with a tiny kitchen
in the rear and an equally comfortless bedroom overhead. The doors of
the lower room (which, like those of a barn, fill the whole end of the
house) being closed, we sought for Old Probabilities up stairs, and
found very little at first sight to gratify curiosity or any craving
for mystery. There was a large wooden room, with walls and floor of
unpainted boards, the ceiling hung with brilliantly colored flags, a
telegraphic apparatus, one or two desks, books, writing materials--a
scientific working-room, in short, with its implements in that order
which implied that only men had used them.
There were in 1874 one hundred and eight such signal stations as
this, modest, inexpensive little offices, established over the United
States, from the low sea-coast plains to the topmost peak of the Rocky
Mountains.
If we were accurate chroniclers, we should have to go back to
Aristotle and the Chaldeans to show the origin and purpose of these
little offices, just as Carlyle has to unearth Ulfila the Moesogoth to
explain a word he uses to his butter-man. The world is so new, after
all, and things so inextricably tangled up in it! In this case, as
it is the sun and wind and rain which are the connecting links, it is
easy enough to bring past ages close to us. The Chaldeans, building
their great embankments or raiding upon Job's herds, are no longer a
myth to us when we remember that they were wet by the rain and anxious
about the weather and their crops, just as we are; in fact, they felt
such matters so keenly, and were so little able to cope with these
unknown forces, that they made gods of them, and then, beyond prayers
and sacrifices, troubled themselves no further about the matter.
Even the shrewd, observant Hebrews, living out of doors, a race of
shepherds and herdsmen, never looked for any rational cause for wind
or storm, but regarded them, if not as gods, as the messengers of God,
subject to no rules. It was He who at His will covered the heavens
with clouds, who prepared rain, who cast forth hoar-frost like ashes:
the stormy wind fulfilled His word. Men searched into the construction
of their own minds, busied themselves with subtle philosophies, with
arts and sciences, conquered the principles of Form and Color, and
made not wholly unsuccessful efforts to solve the mystery of the sun
and stars; but it was not until 340 B.C. that any notice was taken of
the every-day matters of wind and heat and rain.
Aristotle, the Gradgrind of philosophers, first noted down the known
facts on this subject in his work _On Meteors_. His theories and
deductions were necessarily erroneous, but he struck the foundation of
all science, the collection of known facts. Theophrastus, one of his
pupils, made a compilation of prognostics concerning rain, wind
and storm, and there investigation ceased for ages. For nearly two
thousand years the citizens of the world rose every morning to rejoice
in fair weather or be wet by showers, to see their crops destroyed
by frost or their ships by winds, and never made a single attempt to
discover any scientific reason or rules in the matter--apparently
did not suspect that there was any cause or effect behind these daily
occurrences. They accounted for wind or rain as our grandfathers did
for a sudden death, by the "visitation of God." In fact, Nature--which
is the expression of Law most inexorable and minute--was the very last
place where mankind looked to find law at all.
About two hundred and thirty years ago Torricelli discovered that
the atmosphere, the space surrounding the earth, which seemed more
intangible than a dream, had weight and substance, and invented the
barometer, the tiny tube and drop of mercury by which it could be
seized and held and weighed as accurately as a pound of lead. As soon
as this invisible air was proved to be matter, the whole force of
scientific inquiry was directed toward it. The thermometer, by which
its heat or cold could be measured--the hygrometer, which weighed,
literally by a hair, its moisture or dryness--were the results of the
research of comparatively a few years. Somewhat later came the curious
instrument which measures its velocity. As soon as it was thus made
practicable for any intelligent observer to handle, weigh and test
every quality of the air, it became evident that wind and storm, even
the terrible cyclone, were not irresponsible forces, carrying health
or death to and fro where they listed, but the result of plain,
immutable; laws. It was an American in this our Quaker City who
reduced the wind to a commonplace effect of a most ordinary cause.
Franklin, one winter's day passing with a lighted candle out of a warm
room into a cold one, saw that as he held it above his head the flame
was blown outward before him: when he held it near the floor, the
flame was blown into the room. The shrewd observer stood in the
doorway, instead of hurrying out, as most of us would have done,
to save the wasting candle. The warm air in the heated room, he
conjectured, was expanded by the heat, consequently it rose as high as
it could, and made a way for itself out of the room at the upper part
of the doorway, while the heavier cold air from without rushed in
below to fill the vacated space. What if he took the equatorial
regions or great tracts of arid desert for the heated room? The air
over them, subjected by the heat to constant rarefaction, must
rise, must overflow above, and must force the colder air from the
surrounding regions in below. Two sheets of air will thus set in
vertically on both sides, rise, and again separate above. Here was an
explanation of the great, steady, uninterrupted aërial currents which,
at the rate of from fifteen to eighteen miles per hour, sweep the
surface of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The candle, no doubt, was
wasted, but the secret of the trade-winds was discovered.
The idea was correct as far as it went. It did not go very far, it is
true. It had not taken into account the earth's rotation, whose force,
according to Herschel, "gives at least one-half of their average
momentum to all the winds which occur over the whole world;" nor the
infinite variation in the movements of the atmosphere which we call
winds, caused by the change in the sun's motion, by the differing
amounts of vapor held in them, by the physical configuration of the
earth below, by the vicinity of the sea or arid deserts, and by the
passage of storms or electric currents.
The science of meteorology, especially as regards wind, is as yet
searching for general principles, which can only be deduced from
countless facts. We do not now, like Saint Paul, talk of the wind
Euroclydon as of a special agent of God, but describe it by stating
that it is an aërial ascending current over the Mediterranean,
produced by the heated sands of Africa and Arabia. We can even measure
its heat at 200° Fahrenheit, and its velocity at fifty-four miles per
hour. But it attacks us just as unexpectedly as it did the apostle,
and brings disease and death to Naples or Palermo to-day just as
surely as it did to Cambyses. The popular verdict on the matter
would no doubt be that when meteorologists can not only describe the
sirocco, but give warning of its coming, their science will justify
its claim to consideration. The common sense of mankind always demands
as a royalty from every science daily practical benefits to the mass
of men and women. It is not enough for meteorologists to have proved
that the atmosphere varies in weight, in temperature or velocity of
motion according to fixed rules, or to be able to explain why no rain
falls on a certain portion of the coast of Portugal, while a like
coast-exposure in England is incessantly drenched; or to have
determined beyond a doubt that precisely as the ocean of water,
under the influence of the moon and wind, ebbs and flows and has
its succession of storms or calms, the ocean of air in which we
are enveloped answers to the influence of the sun in great tidal
movements, and has also its vast steadily moving waves of cold or heat
or moisture. These discoveries of general truths must be brought to
bear directly on men's daily life before they will have fulfilled
their true purpose. It would seem as if nothing were more easy than to
bring them so to bear. Meteorology, more intimately perhaps than any
other science, concerns our ordinary affairs. The health of mankind,
navigation, agriculture, commerce, the hourly business and needs of
every man, from the merchant sending out his cargo and the consumptive
waiting for death in the east wind, to the laundress hanging out
the family wash, are ruled by that most mysterious, most uncurbed
of powers, the weather. We may rub along through life with scanty
knowledge of the history of dead nations or the philosophy of living
ones, but heat and cold, the climate of the coming winter, yesterday's
rainfall or to-morrow's frost, are matters which take hold of every
one of us and affect us every hour of the day. Now, to bring the known
general truths of this science to practical rules, or to base upon
them predictions of storms or changes in the weather during any
future period, requires, as Sir John Herschel stated twelve years ago,
"patient, incessant and laborious observations, carried on in
every region of the globe." One reason why this is required is the
perpetually shifting conditions of heat, wind and storm. A man who sat
down to work a mathematical problem in the days of Job, if there was
such a man, found its result just the same as the school-boy does
to-day: figures not only never lie, but never alter. But the man who
solves an equation of which the winds and waters are members finds
that the sum to be added varies with every hour. There are, so far
as is yet known, no regularly recurring cycles of weather on which
to base predictions: the conditions of heat and wind and moisture are
never precisely the same at any given point. Hence the necessity, if
we would give the science stability and bring it to bear on our daily
life, of educated, skilled observers at different points to collect
and report simultaneously the daily details of the present conditions.
It is this daily detail of fact which the United States government
supplies through the little stations of observation one of which we
have stumbled into on the Jersey beach. Americans, indeed, have from
the first taken hold of this science with a most characteristic effort
to reduce it to practical uses, to bring it at once to bear on the
well-being at least of farmers and navigators. Dove had no sooner
published his chart of isothermal lines and charts, showing the
temperature throughout the world of each month, and also of abnormal
temperatures, than our government issued the _Army Meteorological
Register_ for the United States, which for accuracy and fullness had
never been equaled. In these the temperature and rainfall for each
month of the year were shown. The forecasts of the weather now
published daily in this country, and which come so directly home to
every man's business that Old Probabilities is a real personage to
us all, have been given in England for several years under the
supervision of Admiral Fitzroy.
But it is high time now that we should come back to our little wooden
house on the beach, and tell what we know of its occupants and uses.
The courteous gentleman (in a blue flannel suit for "roughing it")
who sits at the telegraphic wires is Sergeant G----, belonging to the
Signal Service Department of the army. Instruction in this department
is given at Fort Whipple, Va. One hundred officers besides Sergeant
G---- are now in charge of stations, with 139 privates as assistants.
The average force at Fort Whipple is 140 men. These men are, in point
of fact, soldiers liable to be called into active service in the
field: their duty there, however, is not fighting, but signaling and
telegraphy--a duty quite as dangerous as the bearing of arms. Fresh
recruits for this service are divided into those capable of receiving
instruction only in field duty and those for "full service," which
includes, with military signaling and telegraphy, the taking
of meteoric observations, the collating and publication of such
observations, and the deduction from them of correct results. Passing
two examinations successfully in the latter course, the signal-service
soldier is detailed for duty at a post as assistant, and after six
months' satisfactory service is returned to Fort Whipple for the
special instruction given to observer-sergeants. When qualified for
this work he is detailed, as a vacancy occurs, for actual service.
Having thus discovered how our friend the sergeant came into his
post, we looked about to see what he had to do there. The
brilliantly-colored flags overhead drew the eye first. These flags
serve the purpose of an international language on the high seas, where
no other language is practicable. Twenty thousand distinct messages
can be sent by them. Rogers's system has been, adopted by the United
States Navy, the Lighthouse Board, the United States Coast Survey and
the principal lines of steamers. Each flag represents a number, and
four flags can be hoisted at once on the staff. With the flags there
is given a book containing the meaning of each number. Thus, a wrecked
ship cries silently to the shore, "Send a lifeboat" by flags 3, 8, 9,
or says that she is sinking by 6, 3, 2; or a vessel under full sail
hails another by 8, 6, 0, or bids her "_bon voyage_" with 8, 9, 7.
Owing to the difficulty of distinguishing colors in cloudy days or
when the flags will not fly, other systems of signaling are used: that
of cones similar to umbrellas being considered in the English service
one of the most efficient, a different arrangement of cones on the
staff representing the nine numerals. Men may convert themselves into
cones in an emergency by raising or letting fall their arms, and two
men thus give any signal necessary. As the flags, however, belong
more especially to Sergeant G---- 's duty on the field of battle or to
exceptional cases of storm and danger, we pass them by to examine into
his daily round of duty. Outside, a queer little house of lattice-work
perched on a headland shelters the thermometers and barometers: on
a still higher point directly over the foaming breakers is the
anemometer, the little instrument which measures the swiftness of the
fiercest cyclone as easily as the lightest spring breeze. It consists
of four brass cups shaped to catch the wind, and attached to the ends
of two horizontal iron rods, which cross each other and are supported
in the middle by a long pole on which they turn freely. The cups
revolve with just one-third of the wind's velocity, and make five
hundred revolutions whilst a mile of wind passes over them. A register
of these revolutions is made by machinery similar to a gas-meter.
The popular idea, by the way, of the speed of the wind runs very far
beyond the truth: we are apt to say of a racer that he goes like the
wind, when the fact is the horse of a good strain of blood leaves the
laggard tempest far behind; the ordinary winds of every day travel
only five miles an hour, a breeze of sixteen and a quarter miles an
hour being strong enough to cause great discomfort in town or field:
thirty-three miles is dangerous at sea, and sixty-five miles a violent
hurricane, sweeping all before it.
Our friend the sergeant examines seven times a day at stated periods
the condition of the atmosphere as to heat, weight and moisture, the
velocity of the wind, the kind, amount and speed of the clouds, and
measures the rainfall and the ocean swell: all these observations are
recorded, and three are daily reported to headquarters at Washington.
In these telegrams a cipher is used--as much, we presume, to ensure
accuracy in the figures as for purposes of secresy. In this cipher the
fickle winds are given the names of women with a covert sarcasm
quite out of place in the respectable old weather-prophet whom every
housewife consults before the day's work begins. Thus, when the
telegraph operator receives the mysterious message, "Francisco Emily
alone barge churning did frosty guarding hungry," how is he to know
that it means "San Francisco Evening. Rep. Barom. 29.40, Ther. 61,
Humidity 18 per cent., Velocity of wind 41 miles per hour, 840
pounds pressure, Cirro-stratus. N.W. 1/4 to 2/4, Cumulo-stratus East,
Rainfall 2.80 inch."?
Besides these simultaneous reports from the one hundred and eight
United States stations which are telegraphed to the central office
at Washington, there are received there daily three hundred and
eighty-three volunteer reports from every part of the country, these
being the system of meteorological observations under control of the
Smithsonian Institution for twenty-four years, and given in charge to
the Signal Service Bureau in 1874. In addition to these, again, are
simultaneous reports from Russia, Turkey, Austria, Belgium, Denmark,
France, England, Algiers, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain,
Portugal, Switzerland, Canada--in all two hundred and fourteen. When
we add together, therefore, the
United States Signal Service reports 108
Volunteer reports 383
International reports 214
Reports of medical corps of army 123
we have a grand total of eight hundred and twenty-eight daily
simultaneous reports received at the central office, where
Brigadier-General Albert J. Myer and his brevet aide, Captain H.W.
Howgate (or, if you choose, Old Probabilities himself), wait to scan
through these many watchful eyes the heavens around the world
and utter incessant prophecies and warnings. Besides the regular
observations, report is also made of casual phenomena--lightning,
auroras, time of first and last frosts, etc., etc.
The history of the Signal Service Bureau and the establishment of
these stations and telegraph-lines, bringing the whole country under
the instant oversight of one intelligent observer, would, if it were
briefly written, be full of points of dramatic interest. As yet it
must be gathered out of acts of Congress and official reports. The
service has now existed for fourteen years, but is still without that
full recognition by Congress which would ensure its permanency.
"With interests depending on its daily work as great as can by any
possibility rest upon any other branch of the service, it is yet
regarded as an experiment, an offshoot of regular army service
existing on sufferance, liable at any moment to be hindered in its
operations, if not totally abolished." The benefit of this daily work,
however, affects too nearly and constantly the mass of the people to
allow much danger of its final extinction. What the real value of this
practical work is can be gathered not only from the dry statistics of
annual reports, but from the increased confidence placed in it by the
people, the unscientific working majority.
The help given to farmers should rank perhaps first in estimating the
value of this work. At midnight of each day the midnight forecast is
telegraphed to twenty centres of distribution, located strictly with
regard to the agricultural population. The telegrams, as soon as
received, are printed by signal-service men, rapidly enveloped in
wrappers already stamped and addressed, and sent by the swiftest
conveyance to every post-office which can be reached before 2 P.M. of
the same day, and when received are displayed on bulletin-boards. The
average time elapsing from the moment when the bulletin leaves the
central office until it reaches every post-office from Maine to
Florida is ten hours. In 1874, 6286 of these farmers' bulletins
were issued, and when we consider that by each one of them reliable
information as to the chances of success or failure in planting or
reaping was given, we gain some idea of the directness and force of
the work of this bureau.
The river reports of the office include not only regular daily
observations of the changing depths of the great water-highways,
but forecasts of coming floods or sudden rises and falls of the
river-levels. Before the great floods in the Mississippi Valley in
1874 the warnings given by this means, and which could have been given
by no other, saved an incalculable amount of property and human life.
Bulletins are also issued regarding approaching freezing of our canals
in the winter months, and have enabled shippers to avoid the accidents
common heretofore when enormous quantities of grain, etc. in transit
have been detained by this means, to the serious disturbance of the
market.
Cautionary day and night signals are displayed at the principal ports
and harbors when dangerous winds or storms are anticipated. In
one year 762 of these warning signals were displayed, and 561 were
verified by storms of destructive winds which otherwise would not have
been foreseen. In not a single instance during the last two years has
a great storm reached, without warning from the office, the lakes or
seaports of the country. The amount of shipping, property and life
thus saved to the country is simply incalculable.
Tri-daily deductions or probabilities of the weather, wind and storms,
with part of the data on which they rest, are published in all the
principal papers of the country, and each man and woman can testify as
to their use of them. Who now goes to be married or to bury his dead
or to begin a journey without consulting the two oracular lines in
italics at the head of the leading column? They have come to take part
in our domestic lives. The people would miss politics or the markets
or literature out of the paper with less regret than Probabilities
should the service be discontinued.
Besides this practical labor, there is the publication of nine daily
charts on which are inscribed 2160 readings of different instruments,
giving an accurate view of the general meteoric condition; monthly
charts and charts condensing the results of years of observation;
records furnished for the study of scientific men more comprehensive
and regular than can be offered by any similar institution in any
country.
A special bit of history comes to light respecting our little wooden
shed at the head of Barnegat Bay. An act of Congress approved March,
1873, authorized the establishment of signal stations at lighthouses
or life-saving stations along dangerous coasts, and the connection of
the same by telegraphs, thirty thousand dollars being appropriated
for that end. In consequence, signal stations were established on the
Massachusetts coast, from Norfolk, Va., to Cape Hatteras, and
more closely along this dangerous lee-shore of New Jersey, and
telegraph-lines were laid connecting them with each other and also
with the central office. The plan for the future is to net the whole
coast--the lake, Atlantic and Pacific shores--with these stations and
telegraph-wires. By this means information of coming storms can be
conveyed by signal to vessels, or of wrecks, by telegraph, to other
life-saving stations: the close watch kept upon the ocean-swell
and currents will give warning inland of approaching changes in the
weather; for it is a singular fact that the ocean-swell communicates
this intelligence more quickly than the barometer, in quite another
sense than the poet's
Every wave has tales to tell
Of storms far out at sea.
Our little station belongs to the advanced guard of this proposed line
which is to encircle the coast, the whole work of establishing these
stations and telegraph-lines having been, done by Sergeant G----
and his comrades. Indeed, when we look at all the work done by our
blue-coated friend, his steady, unintermitting attention to duty by
day and night year after year, his comfortless quarters in the wooden
shed on the lonely beach, and the almost absolute solitude for an
educated man during many months of the year, we begin to think his
station not the least honorable among the soldiers of the republic.
Almost any man, set down on the battle-field, one army to meet and
another to back him, with the crash of music and arms, the magnetic
fury of combat blazing in the air, would rise to the height of the
moment and prove himself manly. But to be faithful to petty tasks hour
after hour, through all kinds of privation and weather, for years, is
quite a different matter.
The reports of the chief officer give us a hint of some of the
privations borne by the observer-sergeants, educated young fellows
like our friend. In 1872 the chief ordered one of these men to
establish a station on the western coast of Alaska and on the island
of St. Paul in Behring Sea, which was done, the observer continuing
for a year in that farthest outpost. His record of frozen fogs which
wrap the island like a pall, of cyclones from the Asian seas that lash
its rocky coast, of vast masses of electric clouds seen nowhere else
which sweep incessantly over it toward the Pole, reads more like the
story of a nightmare dream than a scientific statement.
In the next spring the chief ordered another sergeant to found a
station on Mount Mitchell, the highest mountain-peak east of the
Mississippi. Professor Mitchell discovered and measured this mountain
about twenty years ago. While taking meteorological observations upon
it he was overtaken by a storm, lost his way, and was dashed to pieces
over one of its terrible precipices. Several years after his death the
government, suddenly recognizing his right to some acknowledgment from
science, ordered his body to be disinterred and buried on the topmost
peak of the mountain. It was a work of weeks, the body in its coffin
being carried by the hardy mountaineers up almost impassable heights.
But it reached the top at last, and lies there in the sky above all
human life, with the mountain for a monument. One is startled by such
a pathetic whim of poetic justice in a government. It was to this peak
that the sergeant was ordered to carry his instruments and to make an
abiding-place for himself. And here, after two days' journey from
the base, he arrived at night in a storm of snow and hail--the guides
having cleared the way with axes--set up his instruments, and took
observations above the clouds while trees and rocks were sheeted with
ice, and there was no shelter for himself or his companions from
the furious tempests. A hut was built after a few days, and here the
observer remained with the lonely grave as companion, taking hourly
observations during several months.
Another officer was sent to the top of Pike's Peak, where he lived in
a rudely-constructed cabin until his health broke down; he was then
replaced by another, who after a year was obliged to yield also. As
soon as one soldier succumbs in these perilous outposts another goes
forward. The rarity of the air at this great altitude (nearly thirteen
thousand feet) produces nausea, fever and dizziness: added to this
were the intense cold and exposure to terrific storms. Sergeant
Seyboth records several nights when he with his companions were
forced, in a driving tempest, to leave the shelter of their hut and
work all night heaping rocks upon its roof to keep it from being blown
away; beneath them, many thousand feet, was the rolling sea of clouds.
Again and again these men were lost in the drifted snow of the cañons
while passing from station to station, and barely escaped with their
lives. So imminent, indeed, was their danger during the winter of 1873
that prayers for their safety were offered continually in the churches
below.
Frederick Meyer, another of these signal-service soldiers, was sent on
the North Polar expedition with Captain Hall. No such marvelous tale
as that contained in his formal report was ever found in fiction.
Sergeant Meyer made observations every three hours on the voyage
north, and hourly when coming south, during a year and two months. At
the end of that time, as is well known to our readers, he, with part
of the crew of the Polaris, was deserted by the ship, and left on a
floe of ice in 79° north latitude, the steamer going southward without
attempting their relief. Even in that moment of extremity he made
an effort to secure the case containing his observations, but it was
washed away from him by heavy seas. For six months these nineteen
human beings drifted on the mass of ice over the polar seas, through
all the darkness and horrors of an Arctic winter, without fire except
such as was made by burning one of their boats--a feeble blaze
daily, enough to warm a quart of water in which to soak their
pemmican--without shelter save such as the heaped ice and snow
afforded, and on starvation diet. After four months the floe began
to melt so rapidly that it was but twenty yards wide. "We dared not
sleep," says Sergeant Meyer, "fearing the ice would break under us and
we should find our grave in the Arctic Sea." Several times the ice did
break beneath them, and they were washed into the flood, but scrambled
up again on the fast-melting floe. During the whole of this time the
signal-service soldier continued faithful to his work, taking such
observations as were possible with the instruments left to him. The
boat had been burned long before, and they warmed their water with
an Esquimaux lamp. On April 22d their provisions consisted of but ten
biscuits. Starvation was before them when a bear was shot, and they
lived on its raw meat for two weeks. At the end of that time a steamer
passed within sight. The poor wretches on the ice hoisted a flag and
shouted, but the vessel passed out of sight. Another ship a few days
later came within the horizon and disappeared. The next day was foggy:
again a steamer was sighted, and for hours the shipwrecked crew strove
to make themselves seen and heard through the fog, firing shots,
hoisting their torn flag and shouting at the tops of their voices.
They were seen at last, and taken aboard the Tigress, "more like
ghastly spectres who had come up through hell," says one of the
narrators, "than living men."
The pay of the signal-service soldiers is small, and it is hardly to
be supposed that they are all enthusiasts in science, or so in love
with meteorology that they cheerfully brave danger and hardships such
as these for its sake. We must look for the secret of their loyalty
to their steady, tedious work in that quiet devotion to duty which
we find in the majority of honest men--the feeling that they must
go through with what they have once undertaken. And, after all,
the majority of men are honest, and loyalty to irksome work is so
commonplace a matter that it is only when we see it carry a man
steadily through great and sudden peril, or consider how in its great
total the work of obscure individuals has lifted humanity to higher
levels in the last three centuries, that we can understand how good a
thing it is.
At some future time we shall ransack the lower floor of the little
house on the beach and discover what is to be found there.
REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.
A DEAD LOVE.
O Rose! within my bloomy croft,
Where hidden sweets compacted dwell,
The wanton wind with breathings soft,
To perfect flower thy bud shall swell,
Then steal thy rich perfume,
Tarnish both grace and bloom,
Until, thy pearly prime being past,
Withered and dead thou'lt lie at last.
O gleaming Night! whose cloudy hair
Waves dark amid its woven light,
Bestudded thick with jewels rare,
Than royal diadem more bright,
Lo! the white hands of Day
Shall strip thy gauds away,
And in the twilight of the morn
Mock thy estate with cold-eyed scorn.
My love, O Rose! hath had a day
As fair, a fate as quick, as thine:
All wrapped in perfumed sleep I lay
Till my fond fancies grew divine,
And sweet Elysium seemed
Around me as I dreamed.
The rose is dead, the dawn comes fast:
Joy dies, but grief awakes at last.
F.A. HILLARD.
GENTILHOMME AND GENTLEMAN.
"Le dernier gentilhomme de France vient de mourir!" exclaimed the
_Figaro_ a short time ago when recording the death of the Count de
Cambis. But the announcement has been made so often during the last
century that we are led to hope that the race may not be extinct
yet. Every generation of Frenchmen has boasted the possession of its
"first" and lamented the loss of its "last" "gentilhomme de France,"
and on each occasion have hasty English journalists of the day joined
both in the glorification and the lamentation over the individuals
thus commemorated by their own countrymen. The term "gentilhomme" is
so liable to be confounded with "gentleman" that it needs explaining,
for, despite the similarity of derivation, no two words can be more
distinct. The French gentilhomme must be of noble blood: he must be
of ancient and distinguished race, for no _nouveau parvenu_ can ever
aspire to be cited as a _vrai gentilhomme_, while the qualifications
necessary for sustaining the character seem to be wholly confined to
the one virtue of generosity. Whenever you hear it said of a man, "Il
s'est conduit en vrai gentilhomme," be sure that it means no more than
that he performed a simple act of justice in a courteous and graceful
manner. The sacred and self-imposed qualities which make up the
significance of the English word "gentleman" no Frenchman, nor
indeed any foreigner, can understand, and the word itself is never
translated, but always left in its original English. Bulwer defines
the appellation more clearly than any other author when he says, "The
word _gentleman_ has become a title peculiar to us--not, as in other
countries, resting on pedigree and coats-of-arms, but embracing all
who unite gentleness with manhood."
Now the gentilhomme of France is an entirely different type. He _must_
rely on pedigree and coats-of-arms; he must be sudden and quick in
quarrel; he must fling away his money freely amongst the _roture_; he
must be what is called a _beau joueur_--that is to say, he may lose at
the gaming-table the dowry of his mother, the marriage-portion of
his sister, everything, in short, save his temper; he may defraud a
creditor, and be the first to laugh at the fraud. "One God, one
love, one king!" is the cry of the good old English gentleman. But in
religion the gentilhomme Français may declare with Henri Quatre that
"Paris vaut bien une messe;" in love he may pledge his faith to as
many mistresses as that same valiant sovereign; and in politics he
may cry, "Vive le Roi! vive la Ligue!" and yet remain a _parfait
gentilhomme_ in spite of all.
Every generation seems to have furnished its _parfait gentilhomme par
excellence_. The court of Louis Quatorze boasted of its Chevalier de
Grammont, from whose own confession we learn that he gloried in the
skill with which he cheated the poor Count de Camma at Lyons and the
cunning with which he eluded payment of his bill at the inn.
Then came M. de Montrond, and he again was _premier gentilhomme de
France_ while he lived and _le dernier des gentilhommes Français_
when he died. M. de Montrond belonged to two generations, two
strongly-contrasted epochs. At his first ball at court he wore a
powdered _cadogan_ and danced in _talons rouges_: at his last he
lolled with bald head against a doorway, in varnished boots and
starched cravat. His existence has remained an enigma to this hour.
Although solicited to accept office by every party that rose to power
during his life, he steadfastly refused, and yet, by virtue of
his quality of premier gentilhomme de France, possessed unbounded
influence with them all. The explanation he gave of his system was
cynical enough: "A man must march straight to the cash-box and secure
the money, without waiting in the ante-room or the bureau: the power
is sure to follow." He chatted politics sometimes, but never "talked"
them, and seldom failed to introduce the names of one or more of the
forty-three duchesses, countesses and marquises whose peace of mind he
boasted of having wrecked for ever. Is it not strange that such frothy
frivolity could have obtained dominion for more than fifty years over
the most critical people in the world? But Montrond always declared
that no man in France would ever take the trouble to read a book
if once he had taken the trouble to read the preface. Even by the
capricious and pedantic yet ignorant society of fashionable London his
fantastical dominion was acknowledged; and the reason of this will be
understood at once in the fearlessness with which he uttered his rule
of conduct: "Every man of distinction should settle his income at ten
thousand pounds a year, and never trouble himself whether or not he
possesses as much for the capital." This premier gentilhomme de France
was proud of his want of reading, and used often to declare that the
only two books he had ever skimmed were the wearisome _Henriade_
of Voltaire and the frivolous _Liaisons Dangereuses_ of Laclos.
No research, no analysis of character, can be found to explain the
strange inconsistency by which M. de Montrond was, notwithstanding,
entrusted by every government under which he lived with the most
important secrets, the most serious negotiations--sent abroad to stay
revolutions, summoned home to remodel constitutions, and consulted
on every point as though he had spent his whole life in the study of
Montesquieu or Colbert. Such was the moral life of the man pronounced
the premier gentilhomme de France by the fathers and grandfathers of
the present generation.
Let us glance at the physical side of his existence--the outward and
visible sign of the distinctive title with which he was honored. M.
de Montrond began his career by the study of arms, wine, women and
dice--which constituted the accomplishments necessary for a gentleman
of the period--in the regiment of Royal Flanders. Theodore Lamette
was his first colonel, Douai his first garrison-town. Soon after his
arrival there every man in the place became his devoted friend, every
woman his willing slave, and every tradesman his ready creditor. It
so happened that a detachment of Royal Cravattes had sought temporary
quarters in the same town; and among the officers was a certain Comte
de Champagne, a great duelist and gamester. From this man, by some
good fortune, over which a veil has always been thrown by Montrond's
friends, he won a considerable sum, and on finding, after suffering
a considerable time to elapse, that no sign of payment was made,
he proclaimed his intention of taking steps--not according, but in
opposition, to the law--in order to obtain his due. Montrond knew
himself to be a wretched swordsman, and therefore resolved at once
to replace his want of skill by audacity. He sent his servant to the
stable where four-and-twenty goodly steeds belonging to the Count de
Champagne were champing their oats in all security, with orders to
carry them off and leave in lieu of the magnificent animals a message
to the effect that M. de Montrond would sell the stud to pay himself,
and hand over the balance to the Count de Champagne. In a few hours,
as he had expected, he was called to the field, and presented himself
before the great duelist with a phlegmatic humor which completely
upset the count's own self-possession. Montrond was hit hard at
the first lunge. He had intended to be; and the result has become
historical in the annals of dueling. He had been pierced in the breast
by his adversary's sword, and was evidently thought by the latter to
have received his death-wound. In token of this belief the Count de
Champagne lowered his weapon, and then M. de Montrond, making one
desperate thrust, drove his sword right through his adversary's heart.
The Count de Champagne fell dead without a cry, without a struggle.
Then M. de Montrond rose covered with glory and with honor, for in
such adventures lay the fame of the gentilhommes of that time.
It would be impossible to recount the long catalogue of M. de
Montrond's triumphs after this. He became the idol of fashion--as much
with the Directoire as he had been with the old court--and under the
patronage of Madame Tallien he was permitted to carry amongst the
stern republicans the habits and morals of the Régence. It was at
this moment of his life that the one act of expiation of the past took
place. He worked with right good-will for the benefit of the exiled
nobles, many of whom were recalled through his influence, which was
so great that he found means to persuade the unkempt rulers of the
Republic to invite to their banquets the pardoned émigrés, and to show
that they felt no rancor and experienced no dread.
We were about to follow the example of Montrond himself, and forget
that he was married--"just as little as possible," as he was wont to
say, but legally, notwithstanding. He married during the Revolutionary
movement a _grande dame_, a divorced lady, a certain Duchesse de
Fleury, who had sought in this union nothing more than the protection
of her property against the name of her first husband, through which
it would have been infallibly condemned to confiscation. Many of
the great ladies of that time had done likewise, thus defrauding the
Republic. But the Duchesse de Fleury neglected the most important
precaution of all--that of securing protection against the protector
she had chosen, who at once seized the property--more gayly perhaps,
but quite as effectually as the Republic would have done. The terms
of the marriage-contract may be quoted as a specimen of the motives
by which the premier gentilhomme de France was governed in the
transaction. After the declaration that the Duchesse de Fleury had
brought to the _communauté_ certain houses and lands, besides an
income of forty thousand livres, we find added by way of set-off to
this fortune that the count engaged himself to bring yearly the sum
of a hundred thousand francs--the produce of his wits. After a little
while, the premier gentilhomme having exercised the said wits in
spending the produce of the houses and lands of Madame de Fleury, and
Madame de Fleury not being able to return the compliment by selling
the wits of the Count de Montrond, the two went on their respective
ways, leaving to Providence the task of redeeming the lands which the
wits had sold and the income which the wits had scattered to the four
winds of heaven.
Space is wanting to recount the struggles of the different parties
which succeeded each other with such frightful rapidity in France
to obtain possession of the Count de Montrond's influence. But he
remained true to one principle, the one with which he started--"to
make straight for the cash-box." Yet with all this prosaic prudence,
amid the poetry of his position, the moral of this man's life was
fulfilled to the very letter. The Count de Montrond managed to outlive
every pecuniary resource save the one afforded by the remembrance of
"auld lang syne" and the unforgotten days of bygone love. He died in
the house of Madame Hamelin, after having been soothed and sheltered
by this friend and protectress through the revolutionary storm of
1848. He died dependent, subject to the same changes and caprice he
had so long inflicted upon others.
Montrond's successor, the Count de Cambis, the man who has represented
the premier gentilhomme de France in our day, died lately at as good
an old age as the Count de Montrond. _Autres tems, autres moeurs_: no
more cheating at cards, no more beating the watch, as in the case of
the Chevalier de Grammont; no more dueling and killing the adversary
by surprise, as in that of the Count de Montrond. When the bourgeois
king, Louis Philippe, succeeded to the elder branch, the gentilhomme
Français entirely lost his prestige, and the necessity of his
existence was ignored. Everything bourgeois had become the fashion at
court: the court itself was denominated a _basse-cour_ (farm-yard) by
the Faubourg St. Germain, and all who frequented it "les oies de Frère
Philippe" or "les canards d'Orléans." The Count de Cambis appeared at
that moment at the Tuileries in search of office. His name stood high
in the annals of the French noblesse: society had, however, ceased to
confound the gentilhomme with the roué. The conditions necessary
to fulfill the character were changed, and it was now the bourgeois
gentilhomme and not the gentilhomme roué whose claim to the vacant
place was more likely to be accepted. The Count de Cambis had held the
place of honorary equerry to the Duc d'Angoulême, having obtained
it less on account of his patent of nobility than by reason of his
unblemished character. He was now in search of some place about the
court, and soon found favor in the eyes of the citizen-king, to whom
the quiet virtues of the Tiers-État were of more value than the flash
and tinsel of the Régence. The count was of fine, commanding person
and handsome countenance: moreover, he was "the man with a story," and
a painful one it was, creative of the greatest interest in the tender
bosoms of the Orleans princesses. Although poor, belonging to a ruined
family, his prospects had been good at the court of Charles Dix, and
one of the greatest ladies of the court had cast her eyes upon him as
a suitable _parti_ for her daughter. The young lady, nothing loath,
had accepted with alacrity the proposition of marriage, seconded as
it was by the Duchesse d'Angoulême, and backed by the promise of high
office on its realization. A marriage is easy to arrange in France;
not so the execution of the marriage-contract, which is rendered as
wearisome by delays as the still more dilatory proceedings of the law;
and therefore it was deemed advisable, in order to pass this dismal
period, to despatch the Count de Cambis to Holland for the purchase of
horses for the royal stable. Arrived at The Hague, he was seized with
an attack of smallpox, which laid him prostrate on the low flock bed
of the miserable little inn to which he had been conveyed on landing
from the boat. Here he lay for some time incognito, his identity
unknown to any save the faithful valet who attended him, until he had
perfectly recovered from the disease, which, however, was found to
have left the most frightful traces of its passage in scar and seam
and furrow from forehead to chin. The handsome young cavalier who
landed so full of hope and spirits on the quay at The Hague rose from
his bed with a face bloated and discolored, seamed and scarred
and pockmarked, his once luxuriant locks grown thin and dank, his
eyelashes gone, his whole appearance so changed that as he gazed at
himself for the first time in the looking-glass he was overwhelmed
with such despair that, as he owned afterward to his friends, he would
have thrown himself from the window at which he stood into the canal
below had he not been prevented by the strong arm of his servant,
Dulac. A terrible period of anguish and depression followed on this
first excitement, but he awoke from it and returned to life once more,
a sadder and a wiser man. When the first impression of horror and
dismay had passed away his resolution was taken at once. He resolved
to disengage the lady from her vow, and sat down to write the words
which were to rend his heart in twain. At that moment Dulac entered
the room with a packet of letters just arrived from Paris by
estafette. Amongst them was one from the young lady's mother, full of
sweet pleasantry and graceful mirth, describing the gay doings at the
Tuileries, and the delight her daughter had experienced at the idea of
being allowed to attend the Duchesse d'Angoulême to the ball about to
be given in honor of the visit to Paris of some one or other of the
Spanish princes. She described with the greatest vivacity all the
details of the toilet to be worn by her chère petite Adèle and the
kindness of the royal princess, and ended with the most affectionate
expressions of regret at the absence from the fête of her daughter's
affianced lover, writing in playful terms of the danger in which
Adèle's heart would have been placed at the accession of so many new
and handsome cavaliers in attendance on the Spanish prince had it not
been for the precaution of wearing, as the safest shield against all
attacks, the locket which contained the portrait of her brave and
beautiful lover--the miniature he had given her on his departure.
He turned from the perusal of the letter with a deadly chill at his
heart: he crushed it in his hand, and threw it on the blazing logs
upon the hearth, holding it down with the tongs until every fiery
spark had disappeared, then watched the blackened flakes as they flew
one by one up the chimney; and when the last had disappeared he dashed
the tears from his eyes, and, to the great surprise and consternation
of Dulac, ordered him to pack up and prepare for their immediate
return to France.
That very evening he set out by the passage-boat, and arrived in
Paris on the very night of the ball at the Tuileries. With the strange
self-immolation which is generated in some characters by despair
he caused himself to be driven by the quay round to the Place Louis
Quinze, and made the driver stop so that he might torture himself
with the sight of the lights and the shadows of the dancers. He then
alighted at his own door beneath the gateway in the Rue de Rivoli,
which at that hour was silent and deserted, for the line of carriages
were all setting down in the courtyard of the Place du Carrousel. The
gaping valets merely nodded acquiescence to the password he muttered
as, muffled up to the chin, he glided noiselessly over the polished
floor of the vestibule and hurried up the stairs. Dulac was well
pleased to be home again, anticipating with delight the enjoyment of
that repose which after such a long arid rapid journey he had well
earned. What, therefore, was his consternation when _Monsieur le
Comte_ announced his intention of attending the ball, ordering him
to prepare in all haste his court-costume for the purpose! Dulac was
accustomed to obey without opposition, and, although wondering at this
sudden vagary on the part of his master, usually so reasonable in
all things, hastened to do his bidding. The toilet was completed in
silence. A few tears were shed by Dulac over the thin lank locks he
was called upon to friz, and when all was completed and he held aloft
the girandole to light him down the back stairs used by members of the
royal household to gain admission to the state apartments of the
royal palace without passing through the crowd in the ante-room, the
faithful fellow turned heartbroken to his master's chamber.
The Count de Cambis entered the ballroom at the moment when a
quadrille was being made up, and the very instinct of his love--for
it could not be mere chance--led him at once to the room and the place
where Mademoiselle de B---- was seated beside her mother. The count
has often told his friends that he trembled so violently that for a
few minutes he could neither speak nor move, but stood gazing upon
the young lady silent, motionless, as if rooted to the spot. The
whole seemed as if passing before him in a magic-lantern, and when
at length, recalled to himself by the amazement expressed upon the
countenances of both ladies, he ventured to ask his beautiful fiancée
for her hand in the dance, it was no wonder that she did not recognize
his voice, so choked and husky was it with emotion. But the young lady
turned abruptly away with an impatient gesture, and looked imploringly
at her mother for help against the intrusion of the repulsive gallant
she had secured. At a signal from the matron, which did not escape
the count, she bent her head, and the count, stooping also, caught the
whisper, "Nay, mon enfant, ugly as he is, he must not be refused, or
you cannot dance with any other partners all night." With pouting lips
and tearful eyes the young lady extended her hand, but by the time
she had raised her eyes again the suppliant had vanished through the
doorway, his disappearance as mysterious as his first apparition, and,
strange to say, was seen no more. He had caught sight of the locket,
the miniature of himself, with the bright eyes and flowing hair, the
long black eyelashes and glossy moustache. It seemed to reproach him
with the fraud he was premeditating against the lovely girl to whom,
if he listened to the dictates of honor, he must henceforth be as one
dead--as one, indeed, who had died many years before.
His anguish was intense. The test of love had been deceptive, the
ordeal had failed, the verdict had been given against him. He went
back to his chamber, where Dulac was still busily engaged in unpacking
his valise, bade the astounded valet replace everything he had already
taken out, and hurry at once to the Poste aux Chevaux to command
horses for the return journey to The Hague. As soon as he arrived at
that place he wrote a long letter to the young lady's mother releasing
her daughter from all obligation toward himself, and announcing his
determination never to intrude himself upon her notice again. The
Duchesse d'Angoulême, whose experience of life was of its bitterness
alone, is said to have interfered to prevent the affair from becoming
public, and to have assisted in finding another _parti_ for the
deserted fair one.
Meanwhile, the Restoration with its disappointments and broken vows
was replaced by the government of Louis Philippe with its hopes and
promises. The Count de Cambis, whose official position was annihilated
by the storm which swept over the kingdom, found himself immediately,
with the whole army of officials, compelled to choose between poverty
and obscurity or treachery to his former benefactors. When this combat
is allowed to take place between the heart and the stomach, the latter
generally carries the day; and so it did in this case. The Count de
Cambis did but follow the majority in binding himself at once to the
interests of the Orleans family. Louis Philippe, who, like all French
sovereigns, displayed undue eagerness to make use of the old servants
of the preceding dynasty, was not slow to avail himself of the offer
of service made by the Count de Cambis. A place was found for him as
superintendent of the royal stud, and here he really displayed that
disinterestedness in his dealings which entitled him to the highest
consideration. The Duke of Orleans, whose aristocratic tastes always
inclined him to favor distinction of birth, treated the Count de
Cambis with especial preference; and on his side the count was careful
to flatter the instincts of His Royal Highness by assuming the manners
and gait of the ancient raffinés of the Garde Royale. One of
the duke's chief delights consisted in fashioning his household
regulations after the model set by the Due d'Angoulême, and the count
became his chief counsel and adviser in every matter concerning
the etiquette to be observed in a well-ordered court. The tradition
preserved to the latest hour of the existence of the royal stables
tells of the fatality which rendered the Count de Cambis the avenger
of the Restoration he had denied through his share in the catastrophe
which deprived the throne of July of its heir.
It was the 13th of July, 1842. The day was fine. The duke appeared at
a window which looked into the courtyard where the Count de Cambis
was giving orders concerning the day's service. "The victoria to-day,"
called out His Royal Highness from the balcony.--"And Tom?" was the
question sent upward to the duke.--"No, let me have Kent: he goes
best with Ridge," returned the duke.--"But Kent has been much worked
lately, monseigneur, and--."--"Well, well, Cambis, as you like: you
know best," was the final reply as the duke turned away from the
window and retreated into the chamber. Just then one of the grooms,
who had been standing at a respectful distance and had overheard the
words, came forward and in a voice full of mystery begged to inform M.
le Comte that something was wrong with Tom, who had been observed to
be restless and irritable the whole morning, and inquired whether it
would not be well to have him doctored. "Pooh! pooh!" exclaimed
the count. "You are all chicken-hearted in _your_ stable--always
complaining of Tom, whose only fault lies in his spirit. He only shows
his thorough breeding, and the duke wishes to make a gallant display
on starting. There is a crowd already gathered round the gate to
see him drive off." So Tom was harnessed, and the postilion who rode
Piedefer declares that from the very first he argued ill of Tom's
temper, for he observed a vicious expression in his eye, and a
distension of the nostrils which never boded good.
The Duke of Orleans was driven from the palace-gate full of health and
spirits. He was to proceed to Neuilly to bid farewell to his mother,
Queen Amélie, at the little summer château there. Detractors of
the duke's character will tell you that on the way he stopped and
prolonged to undue length a visit he should not have made at all, and
that consequently he was compelled to urge the postilion to greater
speed. Whatever the cause, just at the entrance of the Route de la
Révolte the dreaded outburst of temper on the part of the irascible
Tom took place. At first merely fidgety, and managed with the greatest
delicacy by the English postilion, then ill-tempered and capricious,
swerving from side to side, necessitating in self-defence the use of
the whip--"But only gently and lighthanded, as one's obliged to do
sometimes, just to show 'em who's master," was the poor fellow's
explanation amid the bitter tears he shed when recounting the
catastrophe--when suddenly Tom reared and plunged, and set off at a
mad gallop which no human hand could have had the power to arrest.
The postilion kept a cool head and steady seat: not so the Duke of
Orleans, who rose to his feet in alarm just as the wheels of the
carriage struck against a stone. The shock caused him to lose his
balance: he was dashed violently to the ground, and in a few hours the
hope of France lay dead in the small back shop of a petty tradesman in
the avenue.
The blow was a dreadful one--far heavier than that of a mere domestic
bereavement. It was felt that the royal family had lost its hold, not
of authority, but of sentiment, upon the nation--that the dynasty for
which such sacrifices had been made was wrecked for ever. But no blame
was attached to any individual save by the Count de Cambis himself,
who acknowledged the grievous responsibility he had incurred by
instantly sending in his resignation and withdrawing from court. In
vain did Louis Philippe endeavor to persuade him to return; in vain
did the queen herself, even amid the desolation of the first storm of
grief, disclaim any imputation of blame to the count; in vain did
the Duc de Némours write with his own hand the urgent request that he
would resume office, were it only for a time, in order to display to
the world the conviction felt by every member of the royal family of
the utter absence of any neglect or carelessness on his part. It was
of no avail: the Count de Cambis remained steady to his purpose of
retirement, and disappeared entirely from court.
It was not until the summer of 1847 that a renewal of intercourse took
place. The day was a festival, and the approaches to the palace were
thronged till a late hour. A garden below the windows, surrounded by
a low iron grating, and called the garden of the Count de Paris, had
just been closed for the night; the sound of the drums beating the
_retraite_ was already dying in the distance; the crowd had all
withdrawn, and yet one solitary figure still remained, leaning
disconsolately against the railing, gazing wistfully into the garden,
and every now and then casting furtive glances up at the balcony into
which opened the window of the apartment occupied by the Duchess of
Orleans. Presently a child came down the steps and walked straight to
the gate against which the stranger was leaning, his forehead pressed
against the grating, his hand grasping the iron bars. In a moment the
key was turned in the lock, a little hand was placed within that of
the Count de Cambis, and a gentle voice whispered in his ear, "Come
in! come in! We are all there to-night--grandpère and all. We want
to see you so much. It is mamma's fête." There was no resisting this
appeal. Le premier gentilhomme de France would have been compelled
to forego his title had he refused the invitation, and clasping
the child's hand he traversed the garden in silence, and soon found
himself in the midst of the royal family assembled to celebrate the
fête of St. Hélène in the privacy of domestic affection. The sight
of the well-remembered faces, the smiles and greetings of the royal
family, the cordial kindness of the king, the silent sympathy of
the queen, the gentle welcome of the duchess, at length brought
consolation to the wounded spirit of the count, and without further
ado he consented at once to resume his old position; and the next day,
when he was seen galloping beside the royal carriage up the Champs
Élysées, he was greeted with hearty shouts of recognition by the
promenaders on either side. Everything now went on in the old train.
He was readmitted to the intimacy of the Orleans family, and retained
his place and the confidence of his master until the revolution
of February drove the Orleans family into exile. He retired into
obscurity with a grace and dignity befitting the premier gentilhomme
de France--without reproach, without a stain upon his escutcheon. He
refused the most tempting offers of employment at the imperial
court, and was seen no more, save when now and then, passing down the
boulevard with hurried steps, he was recognized by his long white hair
and braided jacket, with the persistent cipher of the royal house to
which he had been for so many years attached. Then, as he hastened
along with riding-whip in hand and jingling spurs upon his heels,
some old bourgeois sipping his demi-tasse at the door of a café would
exclaim, "There goes the Count de Cambis, le dernier gentilhomme de
France!"
A desperate attempt was made by the imperialists to set up a premier
gentilhomme of their own in the person of Count Morny, who sought to
revive the traditions of De Grammont and of De Montrond. He was brave,
he was witty, his _physique_ might be said to realize the ideal of the
role, but his _morale_ was founded on the theories of the Bonaparte
school. De Grammont tells us how he cheated the greasy cattle-dealer;
De Montrond makes us laugh when he relates how in his tour of
mediation with Prince Talleyrand he was wont to take bribes from two
rival princes, each willing to pay a heavy sum that the other might
be baffled; but neither De Grammont nor De Montrond would ever have
consented to soil his hands with such vile commercial speculations as
the Houillères d'Anzin or the Vieille Montagne, or condescend to such
disgraceful financial mystification as the "Affaire Jecker" of Mexico.
It would be impossible to explain the difference which exists between
the "gentilhomme" and the "gentleman." It is felt and understood,
but cannot be described. The term "gentleman" itself is conventional.
Neither birth nor accomplishments, nor even gentle manners, are
necessary for undisputed assumption of the title. The man who acts
as a lawyer's clerk cannot be called a gentleman, according to Judge
Keating's decision, because, the title having no place in the language
of the law, if he chanced to be indicted for a criminal offence he
would be denominated a "laborer." Serjeant Talfourd's sweeping theory,
of the term "gentleman" being legally applicable to every man who has
nothing to do and is out of the workhouse, cannot be accepted, as it
would of necessity include thieves, mendicants and out-door paupers.
The American police have been compelled, to defend the border-line of
gentility against the encroachments of their vagabond gold-seekers,
card-sharpers and ruffians, and confine the term to those of
respectable calling. In California the term may be applied to every
individual of the male gender and the Caucasian race, the line being
drawn at Chinamen. An American writer contests the acceptance of the
term, in England as being too vague and uncertain for comprehension by
foreigners, and suggests that some less conventional designation than
those now in use should be found to indicate the idea. To the moral
sense it would be natural to suppose that character rather than
calling would be the most important point in the consideration of
the question; but it is not so. In the four-oared race of gentlemen
amateurs held last year at Agecroft in Lancashire the prize of
silver plate was won by a crew taken from a club composed entirely of
colliers, who had been allowed to row under protest, they not being
acknowledged as "_gentlemen_ amateurs." The race over and the prize
won by the colliers, an investigation took place by the committee.
The result was unanimity of the vote against acceptance of the
qualification of the winners. Here, then, occurred the best
illustration of the comprehension of the term by the moderns, for
the "gentlemen," deeming that money _must_ be a salvo to pride in
the bosom of all whose quality of gentleman remains unacknowledged,
subscribed a handsome sum to be distributed amongst the disappointed
crew. But here, again, the proof was given of the vague uncertainty of
the term, for the crew of colliers were _gentlemen_ enough to refuse
the proffered gift with scorn.
G. COLMACHE.
SPECIAL PLEADING.
Time, bring back my lord to me:
Haste, haste! Lov'st not good company?
Here's but a heart-break sandy waste
'Twixt this and thee. Why, killing haste
Were best, dear Time, for thee, for thee!
Oh, would that I might divine
Thy name beyond the zodiac sign
Wherefrom our times-to-come descend.
He called thee _Sometime_. Change it, friend:
_Now-time_ soundeth far more fine.
Sweet Sometime, fly fast to me:
Poor Now-time sits in the Lonesome-tree
And broods as gray as any dove,
And calls, _When wilt thou come, O Love_?
And pleads across the waste to thee.
Good Moment, that giv'st him me,
Wast ever in love? Maybe, maybe
Thou'lt be this heavenly velvet time
When Day and Night as rhyme and rhyme
Set lip to lip dusk-modestly;
Or haply some noon afar,
--O life's top bud, mixt rose and star!
How ever can thine utmost sweet
Be star-consummate, rose-complete,
Till thy rich reds full opened are?
Well, be it dusk-time or noon-time,
I ask but one small, small boon, Time:
Come thou in night, come thou in day,
I care not, I care not: have thine own way,
But only, but only, come soon, Time.
SIDNEY LANIER.
THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS.
BY MRS. E. LYNN LINTON, AUTHOR OF "PATRICIA KEMBALL."
CHAPTER XVII.
WHAT MUST COME.
If Madame de Montfort could not teach Leam some of the things
generally considered essential to the education of a gentlewoman, if
her orthography was disorderly, her grammar shaky, her knowledge of
geography, history and language best expressed by _x_, and her moral
perceptions never clear and seldom straight, she was yet far in
advance of a girl whose training in all things was so infinitely below
even her own dwarfed standard. Madame could read with native grace
and commendable fluency, making nimble leapfrogs over the heads of the
exceptionally hard passages, but Leam had to spell every third word,
and then she made a mess of it, Madame did know that eight and seven
are fifteen, but Leam could not get beyond five and five are ten and
one over makes eleven. If madame thought deception the indispensable
condition of pleasant companionship, and lies the current coin of good
society--in which she certainly sided with the majority of believing
Christians--Leam would be none the worse for a little softening of
that crude out-speaking of hers, which was less sincerity than the
hardness of youthful ignorance and the insolence of false pride. If
madame was only lacquer, and not clear gold all through, Leam had not
the grace of even the thinnest layer of varnish, and might well take
lessons in the religion of appearances and that thing which we call
"manner." Madame did know at least how to bear herself with the
seeming of a lady, and could say her shibboleth as it ought to be
said. Thus, she ate with delicacy and held her knife nicely poised and
balanced, but Leam grasped hers like a whanger, and cut off pieces of
meat anyhow, which as often as not she took from the point. Mamma had
eaten with her knife grasped also like a whanger, and why might not
she? she said when madame remonstrated and gave her a lecture on the
aesthetics of the table. And why should she not make her bread her
plate, and hold both bread and meat in her hand if she liked? Why
was she to wipe her lips when she drank? and why, traveling farther
afield, was she to speak when she was spoken to if she would rather be
silent? Why get up from her chair when ladies like Mrs, Harrowby and
Mrs. Birkett came into the room? They did not get up from their chairs
when she went into their rooms, and mamma never did. And why might she
not say what she thought and show what she disliked? Mamma said what
she thought and showed what she disliked, and mamma's rule was her
law.
All these objections madame had to combat, and all these things to
teach, and many more besides. And as Leam was young, and as even
the hardest youth is unconsciously plastic because unconsciously
imitative, the suave instructress did really make some impression;
so that when she assured the incredulous neighborhood of Leam's
improvement she had more solid data than always underlaid her words,
and was partly justified in her assertion.
Religion, too, was another point on which the forces of new and old
met in collision. Madame was of course what is meant by the word
"religious." Like all persons trading on falsehood and living
in deception, her orthodoxy was undoubted, and the most rigid
investigation could not have discovered an unsound spot anywhere.
She would as soon have thought of questioning her own existence as of
doubting the literal exactness of the first chapter of Genesis,
and she thought science an awfully wicked thing because it went
to disprove the story of the six days. She firmly believed in the
personality of Satan and material fires for wicked souls; and the
sweet way in which she lamented the probable paucity of the saved was
extremely edifying, not to say touching. This childlike acceptance,
this faithful orthodoxy, was one of the things for which the rector
liked her so well. He had a profound contempt for science and
skepticism together; and an unbeliever, even if learned in the stars
and old bones, ranked with him as a knave or a fool, and sometimes
both. His pet joke, which was not original, was that there was only
one letter of difference between septic and skeptic, and of the two
the skeptic was the more unsavory.
Being then pious, madame had hung about her walls short texts in fancy
lettering, with a great deal of scroll-work in gold and carmine to
make them look pretty. When she came into possession of Leam's mind,
she was shocked at her ignorance of all the sayings that were so
familiar to herself and other persons of respectability. Leam knew
nothing but a few barbarous prayers to saints, used more after the
fashion of charms than anything else, the ave and the paternoster said
incorrectly and not understood when said. Wherefore madame caused to
be illuminated some texts for her room too, as lessons always before
her eyes, and counter-charms to those heathenish invocations in which
the child put her sole faith and trust of salvation. And among other
things she gave her the Ten Commandments, very charmingly done.
Round each commandment were pictures, emblems, symbolic flowers, all
enclosed in fancy scroll-work of an elaborate kind. Really, it was a
very creditable piece of bastard art, and Mr. Dundas was moved almost
to tears by it. Madame did it herself--so she said with a tender
little smile--as her pleasant surprise for poor dear Leam on her
fifteenth birthday. And Leam was so far tamed in that she suffered
the Tables to be hung up in her bedroom, and even found pleasure in
looking at them. The pictures of Ruth and Naomi; of the thief running
away with the money-bags; of a woman lying prostrate with long hair,
and a broken lily at her side; of a murdered man prone in the snow,
and a frightened-looking bravo, half covering his face in his cloak,
fleeing away in the darkness, with a bowl marked "poison" and a dagger
dripping with blood in the margin,--all these pictures, which stood
against the commandments they illustrated, fascinated her greatly. The
colors and the gilding, the flowers and the emblems, pleased her,
and she took the texts sandwiched between as the jalap in the jam. At
first she thought it impious to have them there at all, because they
were in the Bible, and mamma used to say that good Christians never
read the Bible. It was a holy book which only priests might use, and
when those pigs of Protestants looked into it and read it, just as
they would read the newspaper, they profaned it. But by force of habit
she reconciled herself to the profanity, and by frequent looking at
the art got the literature into her head. And when it was there she
did not find anything in it to be afraid of or to condemn as too
mysteriously holy for her knowledge. All of which was so much to the
good; and Mr. Dundas had no words strong enough whereby to express his
gratitude to the fair woman who had saved his child from destruction
by giving her the Ten Commandments made pretty by adjuncts of bastard
art.
But had it not been for Alick Corfield, Madame la Marquise de Montfort
would not have made quite so much way. Alick and Leam used to meet
in Steel's Wood; and when Leam carried her perplexities to Alick, and
Alick told her that she ought to yield and gave her the reasons why,
after first fiercely combating him, telling him he was stupid, wicked,
unkind, she always ended by promising to obey; and when Leam promised
the things agreed to might be considered done. In point of fact,
then, it was Alick who was really moulding her, in excess of that
unconscious plasticity and imitation already spoken of. But this was
one of the things which the world did not know, and where judgment
went awry in consequence.
Of course the neighborhood saw what was coming--what must come,
indeed, by the very force of circumstances. The friendship which had
sprung up from the first between Mr. Dundas and madame could not stop
at friendship now, when both were free and evidently so necessary
to each other. For madame, with that noble frankness backed by wise
reticence characteristic of her, had told every one of her loss by
which she had been necessitated to become Leam's governess; always
adding, "So that I am glad to be able to work, seeing that I am
obliged to do so, as I could not borrow, even for a short time: I am
too proud for that, and I hope too honest."
Wherefore, as she was evidently Leam's salvation, according to her own
account, and Sebastian was confessedly her income, and a very good one
too, there was no reason why their several lines should not coalesce
in an indissoluble union, and one home be made to serve them instead
of two. As indeed it came about.
When the year of conventional mourning had been perfected, on the
anniversary of the very day when poor Pepita died, the final words
were said, the last frail barrier of madame's conjugal memories
and widowed regrets was removed, and Sebastian Dundas went home
the gladdest man in England. All that long bad past was now to be
redeemed, and he had made a good bargain with life to have passed
through even so much misery to come at the end into such reward.
Nothing startled him, nothing chilled him. When madame, laying
her hand on his arm, said in a kind of playful candor infinitely
bewitching, "Remember, dear friend, I told you beforehand that I have
lost _all_ my fortune; in marrying me you marry only myself with my
past, my child and my liabilities," his mind repudiated the idea of
the flimsiest shadow on that past, the faintest blur on its spotless
record. As for her child, it was his: he would give it his name, it
should be dearer to him than his own; which, all things considered,
was not an overwhelming provision of love; and her liabilities,
whatever they were, he would be glad to discharge them as a proof of
his love for her and the forging of another golden link between them.
He doubted nothing, believed all, and loved as much as he believed.
He was happy, radiant, content: the woman whom he loved loved him, and
had consented to become his wife. In giving her dear self to him she
was also accepting security and devotion at his hands; and what more
can a true man want than to be of good service to the woman he loves?
If women like to minister, it is the pride of men to protect; and if
the vow to endow with all his worldly goods is a fable in fact, it is
true as an instinctive feeling.
When Mrs. Harrowby heard that the marriage was positively arranged,
she sat with her daughters at a kind of inquest on their dead
friendship with Sebastian Dundas, and came to the conclusion that
they must know something more definite now about this person calling
herself Madame la Marquise de Montfort. As a stranger it was all
very well to overlook the vagueness of her biography--they were
not committed to anything really dangerous by simply visiting a
householder among them--but it was another matter if she was to be
married to one of themselves. Then they must learn who she really
was, and Mr. Dundas must satisfy them scrupulously, else they should
decline to know her.
"It will make a great gap in our society," said kindly Josephine, who,
having the most to suffer, had forgiven the most readily.
"Gap or no gap, it is what we owe to ourselves," said Mrs. Harrowby.
"And to Edgar," added Maria.
"I shall call on Sebastian to-morrow," said Mrs. Harrowby, laying
aside her knitting with the air of a minister who has dictated his
protocol and has now only to sign the clean copy.
"Sleep on it, mamma," pleaded Josephine.
"It will make no difference," returned the mother; and her elder two
echoed in concert, "I hope not."
The next day Mrs. Harrowby did call on Mr. Dundas, and, finding that
gentleman at home, succeeded in speaking her mind. She conveyed her
ultimatum as a corporate not individual resolution, speaking in the
name of the "ladies of the place," which she was scarcely entitled to
do.
Mr. Dundas declined to satisfy her. Indeed, it would have been
difficult for him to have done so, seeing that he knew no more of
Madame de Montfort, his intended wife, than what they all knew; which
was substantially nothing, unless her fancy autobiography could be
called something. He spoke, however, as if he had her private memoirs
and all the branches, roots and hole of the family tree in his pocket;
and he spoke loftily, with the intimation that she was superior; to
all at North Aston, Mrs. Harrowby herself included.
This interview, with its demand unsatisfied and its assertions
unproved, sent the coolness already existing between the Hill and
Andalusia Cottage down to freezing-point; and the worst of it was that
Mrs. Harrowby did not find backers. The neighborhood did not take up
the cause as she expected it would. It halted midway and faced both
sides, in the manner so dear to English respectability--less cordial
to Mr. Dundas and madame than it would have been had Mrs. Harrowby
been friendly, but unwilling to follow her to the bitter end. As they
said to each other, it was all very well for Mrs. Harrowby to be so
severe on the marriage, because she was angry and disappointed--and an
angry and disappointed mother is ever unreasonable--but they who
had no daughters to marry, really they did not see why they should
persecute that poor madame who was such pleasant company, and
had behaved herself with so much propriety since she came. And if
Sebastian Dundas was going to make a second mistake, that was his
lookout, and would be his punishment.
On the whole, the neighborhood when polled was decidedly more friendly
than hostile. The Corfields and Fairbairns were, as they had always
been, neutrals of a genial tint, more for than against; Mr. and Mrs.
Birkett were warm partisans; and only Adelaide joined hands with the
Hill and said that Mrs. Harrowby was justified in her renunciation
and that madame was a wretch. And for the first time in her life
the rector's daughter spoke compassionately of Leam and humanely of
Pepita, saying of the one how much she pitied her, having such a woman
for a stepmother; of the other, that, horrible as she was, at least
they knew the worst of her, which was more than they could say of
madame.
She made her father very angry when she said these things, but she
repeated them, nevertheless; and she knew that he dared not scold her
too severely before the world for fear of that little something called
conscience, and knowledge of the reason why he believed in Madame de
Montfort so implicitly.